Lebanon buries assassinated MP

Lebanon buries assassinated MP
By Yara Bayoumy
REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) - An assassinated anti-Syrian Christian lawmaker was buried on Friday after thousands of mourners marched behind his coffin in east Beirut, waving flags and throwing rice and flowers at his funeral procession. Antoine Ghanem's death in a car bomb attack on Wednesday -- the eighth anti-Syrian figure killed in 2-1/2 years -- raised political tension and a leader of his pro-government party urged the opposition not to block the election of a new president. The anti-Syrian ruling coalition and opposition parties that include the pro-Syrian Hezbollah movement are locked in a 10-month-old tussle and the presidential election is seen as a crucial step towards ending their standoff. Parliament is due to meet on Tuesday to elect pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud's successor, but the vote is unlikely to take place because of the lack of a two-thirds quorum, achievable only if the opposing camps agree on a compromise candidate beforehand. Ghanem's death has reduced the ruling Sunni-Christian-Druze alliance to 68 seats in the 128-seat parliament, a slim majority over the Shi'ite-Christian opposition which has threatened to boycott any session if there is no deal over a new president. Amin Gemayel, head of the Phalange Party to which his son -- assassinated in November -- and Ghanem belonged, warned of the consequences if the election was not held on time. "Your martyrdom Antoine is cherished. No one should boycott the election of the new president, or he should bear the consequence in front of the people, the nation, and history," he told a sea of black-clad mourners at the funeral service in the Maronite Christian Sacre Coeur church in eastern Beirut. "What I fear the most is that the vacuum in Lebanon will lead to division. Is that what the boycotters want? Especially the Christians?" Gemayel asked.

SEVENTH ANTI-SYRIAN KILLED

Ghanem, 64, was the seventh anti-Syrian figure to be killed in Lebanon since the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose death and that of others the Western-backed governing coalition blames on Damascus. Syria has consistently condemned the attacks. Late on Thursday political sources said rival leaders had made contact to defuse tensions in Lebanon's worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, but added that it was very unlikely they could strike a deal in time for a vote next week. Mourners filled an east Beirut neighborhood waving the white and green flag of the Phalange Party, and party anthems blared from loudspeakers as women threw rice and flowers from their balconies at the coffins of Ghanem and his two bodyguards. Pallbearers carried the coffins draped in Lebanese and Phalange flags to the church, where the service was attended by senior Lebanese and international politicians, and the dead were later laid to rest at a nearby cemetery. Some mourners accused Syria of stoking instability in Lebanon with the latest political killing. "This is a crime. We want Lebanon to be free of foreign forces and to be independent. We want the Lebanese to live together as brothers, from all sects," said mourner Ghaleb Shayya.

(Additional reporting by Ali Ghamloush)

Israel hit Syria with 'quick strike' - US official

Israel hit Syria with 'quick strike' - US official
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

WASHINGTON: Israel carried out an air strike well inside Syria last week, apparently to send Damascus a message not to rearm Hizbullah in Lebanon, a US defense official said Tuesday. "It wasn't big. It was a quick strike. They were engaged by the Syrians, they dropped their ordnance and scooted out of there," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official did not know the target of the strike, which was conducted Thursday, but said the US military believed it was to send a message to the Syrians.

"The Israelis are trying to tell the Syrians: 'Don't support a resurgence of Hizbullah in Lebanon,'" the official said. Syria said its air defenses had opened fire on Israeli warplanes flying over the northeast of the country Thursday and warned it was weighing its response to the Israeli "aggression." But Israeli officials have made no comment on the allegations. - AFP

DNA tests on body thought to be Abssi's come back negative

DNA tests on body thought to be Abssi's come back negative
Army captures seven militants, kills one as celebrations go on
By Rym Ghazal
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army continued on Thursday to hunt down fleeing members of Fatah al-Islam, killing one and capturing seven within the vicinity of the battered Northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared as DNA tests came back negative for a body earlier identified as that of Shaker al-Abssi-leader of the group. "The army is continuing its operation of hunting down the remaining fugitives and clearing up the camp of booby-traps and mines," an army source told The Daily Star. According to the National News agency, one militant was killed and three others were arrested following clashes in Abdeh north of Nahr al-Bared. It said another two Fatah al-Islam militants were captured after a chase in Wadi Jamous. The army source added that another two members of Fatah al-Islam were hiding in abandoned farm houses in the green fields near the camp. A woman called Umm Ali and her son, reportedly help capture two members of the militant group who were hiding in their garden in the Al-Rai area outside Babneen village. Umm Ali and her son fought the two men - Talal al-Saaili and Mobarak al-Qarbi, both described as being from the Gulf - until the security forces arrived and arrested them. Security sources said that among the seven captured, three of the men reportedly had Asian features and did not carry identification papers, two of them were from the Gulf and one was from Algeria. Lebanese troops also began erecting barbed wire around Nahr al-Bared to prevent anyone from leaving or entering. "We do not want anyone to enter the camp, whether civilian or journalist, until it has been completely cleared and deemed safe," said the army source.

Local media reported that the first round of DNA testing on the body identified by Abssi's wife and several other witnesses as Abssi gave negative results, as the sample from the body did not not match that of Abssi's daughter. "The army has no comment on the DNA result, that is up to the judiciary [to comment on]," the army source said. Judicial sources told The Daily Star that a second round of DNA tests will take place, with an official request to have the matching done against Abssi's brother in Jordan as there is speculation as to whether Abssi's real daughter was the one sent for the testing. The sources said that while the wife and several scholars from the Palestine Scholars Association (PSA) identified the corpse at the public hospital in the Northern city of Tripoli as that of Abssi, there were other witnesses who said it is not him. Sheikh Ali Youssef, a PSA member, said Thursday that his group had not yet received any official DNA result. "I was shocked at the news that preceded the final results," Youssef told Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation's "Naharkom Saeed" talk show. An-Nahar newspaper said Thursday that the death of Fatah al-Islam spokesman Abu Salim Taha has not been confirmed. Youssef backed up An-Nahar's report, saying that Abu Taha's fate remains unknown after his wife, who went to a Tripoli morgue to identify him, said that the corpse was not her husband.

At the same time, head of the army, General Michel Suleiman, met with US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, but neither official made any statement to the media after the meeting. Former Prime Minister Salim Hoss called for an investigation into the Nahr al-Bared incident, and those responsible for the group and how they operated. "Many questions need to be answered ... who dragged the army into this war? Who knew what was going on there,?" he said in a statement on Thursday. Al-Hayat published a report on Thursday detailing the connection between Fatah al-Islam and Al-Qaeda, with several Saudi members of Al-Qaeda being based in Tripoli and had met with the slain military commander of Fatah al-Islam, Abu Huriera. The army's victory after three grueling months of fighting the Al-Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam has been met with almost daily celebrations. To further continue the joyous mood, there will be a large-scale rally in honor of the army staged in Jounieh on September 22, with reports of other scheduled celebrations to take place later this month.

Berri schedules presidential vote for September 25

Berri schedules presidential vote for September 25
Invitations sent to legislators
By Rym Ghazal
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri officially called on Wednesday for a special session on September 25 to elect a new president in a last bid to unite rival politicians on a political decision. "The speaker had previously said that there will be a session, today he made it official and called for a general assembly at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, September 25, in order to elect a new president," Berri's spokesperson, Arafat Hijazi, told The Daily Star. The presidential election has exacerbated the already deep political divide between the pro-government and opposition forces, with looming fears of the emergence of two governments if the two sides don't agree before President Emile Lahoud's term expires on November 24. "Berri will hold sessions every Friday or whatever it takes to reach an agreement," he said. The session would be the first time the Parliament has met since October as Berri has refused to convene lawmakers after his opposition allies resigned from the government. "We hope that you attend the session," Berri told MPs in the official invitation published in the National News Agency. Berri is calling for a two-thirds quorum of MPs from the 128-seat Parliament to be present on September 25. "If anything less than what he expects shows up, then he will not convene the session," said the spokesperson, adding: "This could lead to disaster." Lebanon witnessed a similar scenario of two government in 1988 when Amin Gemayel, the president at that time, named then army chief General Michel Aoun to a head a military government in conflict with the existing Cabinet. Aoun was later ousted by the Syrian Army.

Last week, Berri called for a consensus candidate. The ruling majority hasn't officially responded, but according to Youth and Sports Minister Ahmad Fatfat, they are not against the idea of a consensus candidate. "There has been an overall positive reaction to Berri's initiative by the leading figures in the ruling camp," Fatfat told The Daily Star on Wednesday. "It is a positive step," he said. "This could be the step needed to open the doors for dialogue between the rical politicians." "We are willing to head to dialogue, and discuss Berri's initiative but without any preconditions," Fatfat said. "However, we do not want to give up our political right to elect the next president by a half plus one [majority]," he added. Fatfat explained that once there is agreement on a consensus president, controversy on how the election actually happens won't matter. At the same time, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea's reaction to the initiative can be characterized as skeptical. "Why does the Berri initiative stress the two-thirds quorum for the election of the next president when it calls for a consensus president?" Geagea asked on Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. TV late Tuesday.

To garner the necessary quorum for electing a president, a compromise must be reached by the feuding parties in Lebanon, as the ruling majority of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has just 69 MPs. The opposition has threatened to boycott the vote and deny Parliament a two-thirds quorum, thus blocking the process. In return, the majority has threatened to go ahead and choose a president from its own ranks with its majority. March 14 is expected to release an official stance on Berri's initiative by end of this week. Lahoud has said he would appoint an interim government headed by army chief General Michel Suleiman if rival Lebanese factions cannot agree on a new head of a state before the presidential term ends. Lahoud hailed Berri's call for a Parliament session to choose a new head of state, and said in a statement released by the Presidential Palace that it should be "a chance to reunite the Lebanese in order to allow the country to overcome the difficult circumstances that it is going through." The Loyalty to the Resistance Parliamentary bloc also welcomed Berri's recent initiative and is awaiting "a responsible response" to it, while maintaining that a national unity government is still the best "safety valve."

"We hope the March 14 Forces will start acting responsibly," the bloc said in a statement after a meeting Wednesday. After talks with Social Affairs Minister Nayla Mouawad, US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman said Wednesday that the United States will do its best to have the presidential election in Lebanon "free from foreign interference." At the same time, the personal representative of the UN secretary general in Lebanon, Geir Pedersen, welcomed Berri's initiative but said that there is a critical step that needs to be done before it works. "The resigned ministers need to return to government as their return would be a critical step toward finding a solution to the presidential issue," Pedersen said after meeting with Public Works and Transport Minister Mohammad Safadi. An-Nahar newspaper quoted sources close to the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner as describing the Berri initiative as "necessary." As for reports of Kouchner's return to Lebanon, An-Nahar quoted him as saying "maybe." Meanwhile, Vatican City might turn into a meeting point of senior Lebanese officials as Aoun, Siniora, and parliamentary majority leader MP Saad Hariri all might be heading to the Vatican around the same time that Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir will be there. Aoun is currently in Europe, where he met on Wednesday with European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France.

More pix of the victorious Leb Army return!

The Victorious return of the Lebanese Army from the Nahr el Bared camp

www.tayyar.org

Fatah al-Islam chief Shaker al-Abssi killed

Fatah al-Islam chief Shaker al-Abssi killed
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, Sept 2, 2007 (AFP) - The head of Fatah al-Islam, Shaker al-Abssi, was killed on Sunday in fighting with the Lebanese army at a refugee camp and his body has been identified, an army officer told AFP. "The body of Shaker al-Abssi is among the corpses of Islamists taken to the state-run hospital in Tripoli," said the officer, who did not wish to be identified. Several medical examiners were dispatched to the hospital to view the bodies of Islamists taken there, he added. Lebanese minister Ahmad Fatfat told Al-Jazeera television, monitored in Dubai, that it appeared that Abssi had been killed in the siege. "Information that reached me about one and a half hours ago (around 1830 GMT) confirms up to 90 percent that several witnesses identified the body of Mr Shaker al-Abssi at the government hospital in Tripoli," said Fatfat. "But further confirmations are required, additional witnesses have been called, and DNA tests are being carried out in order to have a definite confirmation before an official statement is issued," he said.

Fatfat is minister for youth and sports and close to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Asked how long these procedures would take, he said: "If witnesses are unanimous, I think DNA (tests) would become secondary, especially since Abssi's wife is on hand. But if a DNA test is needed, that takes around two days." -AFP

Abssi: fighter pilot turned Islamist radical

Shaker al-Abssi, the Al-Qaeda-inspired leader whose fate is unknown after a bloody siege in Lebanon, is a Palestinian refugee with a battle-hardened and globetrotting past. In the 1980s, Abssi served in the secular Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), flew MiG fighter jets for Libya in its war with Chad, and fought Israeli forces which invaded Lebanon to drive out the PLO, his brother Abed said. But later Abssi turned to radical Islam out of both religious conviction and "frustration" over the failure of the Palestinian cause, Abed told AFP recently in the Jordan capital where he lives and works as an orthopaedic surgeon. "My brother is one of them (Islamist radicals). They think maybe Islam is the way to liberation. Everything else failed," he said as he worried about his brother.

His fate remained unknown as one Lebanese army office said Abssi, the leader of Fatah al-Islam, appeared to have fled the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon the troops announced they had retaken control on Sunday. But an army source told AFP later that his body had been identified among the dead Islamists taken to the state-run hospital in Tripoli. In addition to being sought by Lebanese troops, he is wanted by both Syria and Jordan for radical activities, including a plot that killed a US diplomat in Amman. Born in the Ain Sultan refugee camp near the West Bank town of Jericho in 1955, Abssi fled with his family to Jordan after Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 war. Abed described his brother as a "brilliant" student in high school who left for Tunis to study medicine, but his main ambition was to work directly for "the liberation of Palestine." Abssi jointed Fatah, the main PLO faction, which sent him to Libya to become a pilot of Russian-built MiG fighters at the air force academy there, he added. "He was very successful. He piloted the MiG 23. When Libya went to war with Chad, he defended Libyan territory with his plane," Abed al-Abssi added. While a medical student in Cuba in 1981, Abed al-Abssi received a visit from Shaker who was en route to Nicaragua "where he was to help train a Sandinista air force. He stayed there four or five months, I believe." Then during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he fought in the Bekaa Valley as the PLO did not have any planes, before returning to serve in the Libyan air force.

In 2002, the Syrian authorities threw him in prison for belonging to a banned Islamist group and for plotting attacks. During his three years in jail, a Jordanian court sentenced him to death in his absence for having taken part in organising the 2002 assassination in Amman of US diplomat Laurence Foley. Released in 2005, he left for Lebanon, where he was an activist leader for the Fatah-Intifada group, which was close to Syria, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut. But months later he chose the path of radical Islam and led 100 armed men to set up beside the Nahr al-Bared camp. There he founded Fatah al-Islam. In an interview with the New York Times in March, Abssi pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the fugitive leader of the Al-Qaeda network, and said that killing American and Israeli civilians is justified. "We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn't it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children? It is our right to hit them in their homes the same as they hit us in our homes," he told the daily.- AFP

Lebanese Army prevails at Nahr al-Bared

Lebanese Army prevails at Nahr al-Bared
Fatah al-islam militants slaughtered in last-ditch bid to break out of camp
By Michael Bluhm
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army crushed a series of pre-dawn escape attempts by Fatah al-Islam militants on Sunday and won control of the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in North Lebanon after more than 100 days of battle. Soldiers briefly danced in the streets near the camp with celebrating locals to mark the end of a conflict that left some 158 soldiers dead, as well as some 20 civilians and dozens of militants, according to official army counts. The army killed 39 militants and captured 20 others on Sunday when the remaining Fatah al-Islam gunmen tried in at least three places to break out of the largely destroyed camp at about 3-4 a.m., said an AP report. A high-ranking senior army officer told retired army General Elias Hanna that the military believed Fatah al-Islam leader Shaker al-Abssi had fled three to four hours before the other militants' bids to escape, Hanna said. As The Daily Star went to press, however, reports emerged that Abssi's body had been found at Nahr al-Bared. These could not be confirmed. The attempted breakout began as a clutch of gunmen sprang from an underground tunnel in an army-controlled part of the camp, a television report said. At the same time, another band of militants reportedly attacked a different army position while accomplices from outside the camp arrived in a white Mercedes to pin army troops down from the other side. Soldiers killed three men from the car, a report by Agence France Presse said.

The army initially believed Abssi was in a third crew that snuck out along a river running between the southeastern part of the camp and the village of Ayun al-Samak in a remote mountainous region, the AFP report said. The army killed a number of members of that group, but several escaped. Army troops fanned out around the camp and blocked roads to stop militants from fleeing, as helicopters helped in the search for fleeing gunmen, said an AP report. The two other attempts at breaking out of the camp might have only been a "decoy" to give Abssi cover to get as far away from the camp as possible, perhaps out of the country, Hanna said. "It was like a desperation move for Fatah al-Islam or maybe for the army not to kill or capture Shaker al-Abssi," he told The Daily Star. "I expected a breakthrough, but it seems that these guys really want to die. They had prepared for all of this when they evacuated the wives and the children." The planning and use of outside personnel in Sunday morning's operation signals that Fatah al-Islam can still function despite the end of the Nahr al-Bared battle, Hanna warned. "This kind of operation needs broader capabilities," he said. "It was well-prepared from inside and outside. They have to have communication and they have to have a certain knowledge or tactical information about what is going on outside Nahr al-Bared. There must be some people who planned for his escape from the camp. "Was it only Shaker al-Abssi? I doubt it. This is not Abssi only. He is not Napoleon. "From the outside they still have some committed people. There must be some more Lebanese or some more regional players involved."

The militants could never have won at Nahr al-Bared once the army surrounded the camp after hostilities erupted on May 20, but the army performed well in the conflict against the well-armed and well-trained Fatah al-Islam militants despite the army's lack of advanced weaponry and experience in urban warfare, he said. "From the first day when the camp was encircled, militarily speaking it is doomed," Hanna said. "I don't think that three months for our army is too long if you take the situation of the camp - a very condensed area." Army Commander General Michel Suleiman had told the Cabinet that the siege could last from three to six months, Hanna added. The army's victory might deter any other militant groups with similar plans in Lebanon, Hanna said. "The stakes were very high," he added. "This fight may help the army to really understand what could face the army in the future in Ain al-Hilweh or Rashidiyeh," he added.

Even though the army has taken control of the Nahr al-Bared camp, the military still has work to do. "From the military point of view, we're not done yet," Hanna said. "The army still has to clear the camp, see what is inside, debrief the people and reconstruct the whole structure of Fatah al-Islam" to determine if it resembled Al-Qaeda or was linked to a foreign intelligence apparatus. The gun battles ceased before noon on Sunday, while the army later cordoned off the area around the camp, closed the nearby road connecting Tripoli to Syria, set up checkpoints throughout the country and continued searching for escaped militants. The army burned a field near Nahr al-Bared to flush out militants. Many inhabitants of North Lebanon armed themslves with guns and sticks to defend their communities and deny refuge to escaped militants, one report said. Others gathered near the camp to cheer the soldiers, and nearby villagers fired weapons to celebrate the conquest. The army also asked the displaced residents of the Nahr al-Bared camp, who number more than 31,000, not to return there until the military opened the camp. - With agencies