Lebanon Latest: Talks Fail as Prime Minister Hariri Remains Defiant (Shadid)
Friday, January 21, 2011 at 13:34
Anthony Shadid reports for The New York Times:
Lebanon’s worst crisis in years escalated dangerously on Thursday as a last-ditch effort to negotiate a solution ended in failure and the American-backed caretaker prime minister struck a defiant note toward Hezbollah and its allies, which brought down his 14-month-old national unity government this month.
The events cast the crisis into an unpredictable moment, as each side became ever more entrenched in positions with little common ground over indictments expected to name members of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant movement, in the assassination of the prime minister’s father, Rafik Hariri.
The 17-minute speech by Prime Minister Saad Hariri was delivered just hours after Turkey and Qatar announced that they had abandoned work on their diplomatic initiative. It focused the long-running confrontation in this flammable country between Mr. Hariri’s supporters, backed by the United States and France, and Hezbollah and its allies, backed by Iran and Syria, squarely on Mr. Hariri himself.
In his address, he said he would seek to form a new government in talks next week, defying demands by Hezbollah and its allies that he step down and raising the prospect that the militant movement may revert to the street — be it through protests, labor strikes or even violent confrontations — to ensure that Mr. Hariri is unable to do so.
“I am committed to my candidacy for the prime ministry,” Mr. Hariri said.
A senior opposition official replied, “We don’t want him anymore.”
The speech illustrated an unusual quality of the confrontation so far: Mr. Hariri, long seen as a neophyte and sometimes derided for his naïveté, managed to put Hezbollah and its allies in the position of having to take responsibility for any strife that erupts. In a series of moves in the past months --- by lying, according to his opponents --- he has managed to win tactically at several turns in the crisis and put his opponents on the defensive, though those same opponents warn that he may disastrously lose the greater battle.
“It’s on the razor’s edge,” Walid Jumblatt, a politician and a leader of the Druse minority who has emerged as a kingmaker, said in an interview. “I can see the nervousness of Hezbollah and the Syrians. They feel — and they are right to feel --- outmaneuvered and betrayed.” He warned that the crisis “might blow up the whole country.”
The confrontation has centered on a United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of Mr. Hariri’s father, a former prime minister. He was killed with 22 others in a bombing in February 2005 along Beirut’s seafront, an attack that refigured the political calculus of a diverse country that divides power among its sects. It has yet to forge a new status quo.
Indictments were handed to a judge this week in The Hague, and though they remain secret, it has become commonly accepted that members of Hezbollah, the single most powerful force here, will be named when they are issued within the next two months.
In the speech, Mr. Hariri promised “to uncover the truth and realize justice.”
Each side, though, claims the moral high ground....
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