Sfeir warns: confrontation should not turn into clash
Beirut (AsiaNews) – “If escalation continues in this manner, it will definitely lead to a clash that should be avoided at all costs”. These words of the Maronite Patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir, clearly illustrate the concern felt by the country’s highest Catholic authorities as they face a situation that looks like it could degenerate into civil war.
A meeting held this evening between the former president and Christian leader, Amin Gemayel, and the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been seen as a bid to ward off this terrible prospect. Neither revealed any details about their meeting but the father of Minister Pierre Gemayel, who was murdered on 21 November, reported them to other leaders of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority that supports the government of Fouad Siniora, which is also backed by the West and moderate Arab countries. And today in Damascus, the German Foreign Affairs Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urged the Syrian government to prevent the destabilization of the Country of the Cedars. Talks undertaken by the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, in Beirut since yesterday, are moving in the same direction. Meanwhile, thousands of men from the opposition, led by Hezbollah, continued their “indefinite sit-in” for a fourth day outside the Grand Serail Palace, the seat of the executive. Today, there was a large deployment of soldiers in the heart of Beirut and in Kaskas neighbourhood, where Shiites of Hezbollah and Sunnis loyal to Hariri clashed yesterday, leaving one dead and 12 injured. On a political level, the MP Boutros Harb, leading a group of lawmakers of the 14 March movement, went to the Speaker of the Parliament, Nabih Berri, to try to convince him to resume his mediation between the majority and the opposition. However Harb himself declared his mission to be a failure because the demands posed by Speaker Berri were the same as those put forward by the Shiite community led by the Party of God and the Amal movement, of which Berri is chairman. One immediate response to the appeal of the 14 March movement came from the former minister Frangieh, an ally of Hezbollah, who requested the government and its leader, Fouad Siniora, to “obey the will of the people” and to step down before it is too late. Frangieh also reiterated his full respect for the Maronite Patriarch, although in a controversial vein, inviting him to “safeguard the good of his children in the same way.” The cardinal, in mass celebrated yesterday, affirmed that “what is happening in our home today shows how many people are not thinking about anything except their own interests and are not listening to their consciences.” The patriarch urged a return to “calm and mature dialogue, regardless of how disappointing it was, but words should be stripped of vulgar and indecent rhetoric and insults that we are hearing these days.” Dialogue remains “safer than strikes and demonstrations, paralyzing the market and intimidation of citizens”. Meanwhile Premier Siniora has restated his refusal to resign under pressure from street protests and he asked the Defence Minister, Elias Murr, and the army commander, General Michel Suleiman, to “use the most severe measures to maintain law and order” and to capture the murderers of the Shiite youth killed last night, Ahmed Mahmoud. His funeral, scheduled for today, is anticipated with dread.
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