First street demonstrations as Arab envoys arrive in Beirut
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Activists from the Hizbollah-led ‘8 March’ movement staged rallies this morning in some Beirut streets but were dispersed by soldiers who are deployed across the city. Some schools did not open today.
These early demonstrations coincided with the arrival in the Lebanese capital of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad who, according to newspaper An-Nahar, are scheduled to meet Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, Prime Minister Saad Hariri and National Assembly Speaker Hariri as well as top Hizbollah officials.
The visit by Turkish and Qatari officials comes a day after a summit in Damascus between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatar Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to Syrian news agency SANA, the leaders decided to back Syrian-Saudi mediation to solve the Lebanese crisis.
The meeting was preceded by a telephone conversation between Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iranian caretaker Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi also visited the Turkish capital yesterday. Equally, Saudi Arabia issued a statement yesterday calling for “Lebanon’s unity, security and stability” to be preserved.
US President Barack Obama urged the Lebanese to preserve calm, whilst UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “Nobody should politicise the work of the UN-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of Lebanon's former premier Rafik Hariri.”
The flurry of diplomatic initiatives and statements mirrors the international community’s concerns over rising tensions in Lebanon after Chief Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) Daniel Bellemare submitted indictments into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik in accordance with the rules of the tribunal set up by the United Nations Security Council, which will ultimately decided whether to accept them or not.
The names of the people charged are still secret. According to some sources, high-level Hizbollah officials are on the list of people charged in the bomb attack that killed the former Lebanese prime minister and 21 other people.
The publication of such information was sufficient for Hizbollah to brand the tribunal a US-Israeli plot against Lebanon and itself and to demand that the findings of the STL be rejected out of hand. In fact, the Shia-based movement called for the boycott of the tribunal, threatening to cut off the hands of anyone who tried to arrest its officials. In the end, it pulled out of the Lebanese government headed by Saad Hariri, the son of the murdered prime minister, causing its collapse.
The fall of the government, ostensibly set up as a national unity government with members from all parties, opens a crisis with unpredictable developments. As a sign of the times, Lebanese President Suleiman has already decided to postpone talks scheduled for tomorrow to 24 January.
In the meantime, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh warned that the crisis could negatively affect the nation’s improved debt-to-G.D.P. ratio and growth rates in 2011. (PD)
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