Beirut parties seek way ahead as young seek way out

Beirut Letter:Never knowing what the next moment might bring, Beirutis live day by day, unable to plan for tomorrow, next week, month or year. At present their bickering politicians are talking to one another, seeking agreement on a consensus candidate for president before the November 24th deadline.

But the risk of assassinations grows the closer the US-backed government and Syrian- and Iranian-supported opposition get to an accord. Good news is bad news for Beirutis. More innocent civilians are killed and maimed by bombs than politicians.

But the Lebanese are not cowed. Businessmen go to work, housewives attend to shopping and children ride to school in buses travelling down streets strangled by parked cars.

The car bomb at rush hour is the favourite weapon of Lebanon's mysterious destabilisers.

Although Syria is routinely blamed by the government camp, no one really knows who the bombers are and what sinister interests they represent.

Security is tight round sensitive sites. Cars slalom through obstacles on the block on Bliss Street where prime minister Fuad Siniora's flat is located, although he has been camping out in his office in the Ottoman-era Serai for the past 10 months. The short road in front of the aubergine-coloured house of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a leading figure in the ruling coalition, is closed by barriers and troops. He loudly proclaims the bombers want to kill enough deputies to deprive the governing camp of its majority.

The Phoenicia Hotel, where pro-government deputies are staying in suites, is surrounded by barricades and armoured troop carriers.

In spite of the political crisis, there are traffic jams in the streets, shops are filled with the latest Paris fashions and restaurants and cafés are mushrooming.

Along Hamra, the main thoroughfare of the western sector, pavement tables are filled with customers sipping coffee and poring over the morning's papers or analysing the latest news from the political front. Who is talking to whom is given great significance. Tracking conversations has taken over from reading tea leaves and the dregs in cups of Turkish coffee.

But game Beirutis are not gripped with tension or depression due to the antics of their despised politicians. They shrug and observe that the period ahead of a presidential election is traditionally a time of confrontation between fractious factions. The warm sun is high in the cobalt sky, there is a soft breeze from the sea. Life is grand in Lebanon.

Fairy lights and paper fringes in orange, red and yellow are strung between buildings to celebrate the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Stores and offices shut at seven in the evening so believers can get home for iftar, breakfast.

Iftars are fine occasions for families to meet, businessmen to entertain employees and politicians to engage in horse-trading. Ramadan is meant to be a time of peacemaking.

Night revels follow the daily fast. Nicole, Sawsan and I dine at a recently popular restaurant serving fusion food, orientalised occidental dishes or vice-versa. It's difficult to tell.

A classic black-and-white film with subtitles in English flickers on the cinema screen covering one wall while soft jazz creates a background for murmured conversations of youngster. They flock in and flit from table to table as we eat fish and fowl with sweet-and-sour sauce.

Outside, pavements and streets bustle with people of all ranks and sects. Men, women and children devour plates of special Ramadan sweets. Youths in T-shirts and baseball caps on backwards congregate on corners to gossip and puff away at cigarettes. Omnipresent armed troops and police make Beirut one of the region's safest cities.

But all is not well in Lebanon. There are currently 30,000 young people applying for emigration. Tens of thousands have already left. The economy is in freefall and Francolis Bassil, head of the bankers' association, is warning that if the protracted political crisis continues there could be a drop in the value of Lebanese treasury bills held by the country's banks.

If they foreclose on loans taken out by small businessmen, the backbone of the economy, unemployment will soar. Gulf investors with windfall profits from high oil prices are not putting their money into Lebanon and wealthy Gulf tourists are going elsewhere, leaving deluxe hotels without customers.

Bankers and businessmen are jittery about the possibility of devastating political or military fallout if the US or Israel or both bomb Iran.

Whatever happens in the region affects Lebanon, a country of 18 minorities who have never quite come to terms and are often used by outsiders playing deadly games. They soon lose interest and shift their meddling to other vulnerable countries while the Lebanese suffer beneath the golden sun and clear sky, stroked by the tender breeze from the Mediterranean.