The scar of Hariri's murder will never heal in
Lebanon
By Robert Fisk
06/01/07 "The
Independent" -- - -They were handing out white
roses where the bomb went off. On 14 February 2005, ex-prime
minister Rafik Hariri was killed there and the 20ft bomb crater
has remained a scar on the surface of Beirut history ever since.
But yesterday, as the Lebanese learned that there would indeed
be a United Nations tribunal to condemn his killers, the crater
- from which vital evidence was removed by Syria's friends in
the security services - was filled in and the road resurfaced
and the flowers handed to motorists by young men in T-shirts
bearing Hariri's portrait.
He was smiling in the picture. But would he have had much to
celebrate yesterday? True, the UN Security Council invoked
Chapter VII of the UN Charter to create a special international
court to try the suspects in Hariri's murder but the very fact
that the Lebanese government could not formally request the
court spoke volumes about its own impotence.
With its Shia ministers missing, the Hizbollah opposition to the
government is dismissing the whole affair as a charade and
accusing the UN of interfering in the sovereign affairs of the
Lebanese state.
Syria, whose security apparatus remains the principal suspect,
roars quietly over the border. Will there be a price to be paid
for this tribunal? Probably.
Clearly, George Bush will be pleased because he has long ago
lined up President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in his sights. Not
long ago, receiving Lebanese visitors in the White House - and
this a 100 per cent accurate quotation from the horse's mouth,
so to speak - Bush announced that he was "going to hang Bashar
by the balls". The problem, of course, is that Mr Bush is in no
position to do that. Indeed, it is the army of Iraqi insurgents
who appear to have Washington by the balls and it is Mr Bush who
may need President Assad's help to relieve this terrible
pressure. For at the end of the day, Syria and Iran are the two
countries which the US needs so it can extract itself from Iraq.
So Lebanon can be betrayed again. Certainly, the government of
the Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, is of less
importance than the lives of US troops in Iraq. And the UN
line-up on Wednesday night was equally interesting. Qatar and
South Africa abstained from the UN vote, mainly because they
have substantial business interests in Syria. The Russians and
the Chinese are all too well aware how fragile the political and
military situation is in Lebanon; the Chinese have a unit in the
UN force in the south of the country, a peacekeeping army that
is increasingly dependent on the Hizbollah militia for
protection. With the battles continuing around the Nahr al-Bared
Palestinian camp in the north, Lebanon is moving ever more
dangerously towards the kind of precipice of which its
politicians always warn. In reality, the Lebanese nation is now
in a parlous state, so delicate that the Hariri tribunal - of
such great import in the aftermath of the 2005 murder - now
seems almost irrelevant.
Hariri's son, Saad, described the tribunal's creation as "a
great victory for all of Lebanon" and visited his father's tomb
in the centre of Beirut after the news from New York. Yet we
still do not know where the tribunal will sit, how many judges
it will have or what powers it will have invested upon it.
Firecrackers echoed through Beirut as Hariri's supporters
celebrated but someone threw a hand grenade near St Michael's
church in Galerie Semaan on Wednesday night. And in the early
summer heat of Beirut, roses always wilt.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
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