MIDDLE EAST: The power vacuum in Beirut does not seem to worry opponents of Lebanon's fallen regime, reports Lara Marlowe
Not long ago, just listing the names of Syria's most faithful servants in Lebanon would have been asking for trouble.
"Unless these seven people are punished, we will not enter consultations with President [ Émile] Lahoud, and there is no way out of the impasse," Samir Frangieh, a leading opposition figure, told The Irish Times last night. The impasse he referred to was the fall of Omar Karameh's government on Monday.
Mr Frangieh listed the Lebanese whom the opposition holds indirectly responsible for the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri on February 14th: the head of general security, Jamil Said; the head of state security, Edouard Mansour; the head of military intelligence, Raymond Azar; the state prosecutor, Adnan Addoum; the head of the presidential guard, Mustafa Hamdan; the chief of police, Ali Haj; and, last but not least, the man responsible for wire-tapping for military intelligence, Ghassan Tufeili.
The opposition has no evidence that these men were involved in Mr Hariri's killing, Mr Frangieh admitted. "But by letting the attacks on [ the former minister Marwan] Hamadé and Hariri happen, they proved their incompetence. And no serious investigation can take place as long as they continue to occupy these positions."
But wasn't it unlikely that President Lahoud, who was put in office by the Syrians 6½ years ago, would dismantle his security apparatus at the demand of the opposition? "Everyone thought it was impossible that Karameh would resign," Mr Frangieh said. "As long as these people are in place, there are serious threats to the safety of members of the opposition."
That includes Mr Frangieh (59). An intellectual and former leftist, he was one of the minds behind the 1989 Taif Accords that ended the 1975-1990 civil war. As president of Lebanon, his uncle Suleiman invited Syrian troops into Lebanon in 1976, to prevent the Maronites losing to the Palestinians. "The Syrians offered their services, the way a mafia offers protection."
A constant opponent of the Syrian presence, he rarely speaks to his second cousin, young Suleiman, who was the extremely pro-Syrian minister of the interior in the government that fell on Monday.
The power vacuum in Beirut does not seem to worry Mr Frangieh. "We often went for months without a government during the war," he says.
From the opposition's point of view, it is Mr Lahoud - and Damascus - who are in hot water. The president is required by law to consult all parties in parliament before naming a new prime minister. As long as the opposition refuses to talk to him, no Sunni Muslim will accept the job. (Under the 1943 national pact, the prime minister must be a Sunni.)
Mr Frangieh had spent the day in meetings with the Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, and other opposition figures. "We know our position. We know the international and Arab positions, but we are getting contradictory signals from Damascus," he said.
He cited a newspaper interview in which Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said that, technically, a Syrian withdrawal could be completed in one year, but that strategically it could not occur until there was peace throughout the Middle East.
Mr Assad is to travel to Saudi Arabia today to see King Fahd. "The Arabs are trying to make Bashar al-Assad understand that the situation is extremely serious, that if he doesn't change his policy in Lebanon, there will be regime change in Damascus," Mr Frangieh said.
He rejected suggestions that the opposition was choosing alignment with the US and Israel over Syria and Iran. "We have a big problem with the Americans, which is our attitude towards the resistance," he said, referring to the Shia Muslim militia Hizbullah, whom the US considers "terrorists".
UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calls for the disarming of all militias in Lebanon. "Personally, I think they should be disarmed, but not through force," Mr Frangieh said. "Had Hizbullah not liberated the south [ from Israeli occupation], I don't think we would be seeing this popular uprising in Beirut now."