Hizbollah Collapses Lebanese Government

[MKSheppard]

Basically, all the hizbollah ministers resigned in advance of whatever report the tribunal was to issue regarding Harai's death several years ago.

No link now, this is breaking...

[Talhe]

Link and articles/updates below:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/ ... TE=DEFAULT

BEIRUT (AP) -- Lebanon's national unity government has collapsed after Hezbollah ministers and their allies resigned over a U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The state-run National News Agency announced Wednesday that 11 ministers were stepping down from the 30-member Cabinet headed by Western-backed Saad Hariri, the slain prime minister's son.

Hezbollah needed the backing of more than a third of the ministers to bring down the government.

BEIRUT (AP) - A Lebanese official says Hezbollah ministers and their allies have resigned from the Cabinet, bringing the government to the brink of collapse.

Energy Minister Jibran Bassil told a news conference Wednesday that 10 ministers are pulling out. They need just one more minister to resign in order to force the government to fall and an 11th minister could resign later in the day.

The ministers are stepping down from the 30-member Cabinet over tensions stemming from a U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of a Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

[JME2]

Wow; I wonder how the rest of the region is going to react.

[Rogue 9]

Well, that doesn't tell us who exactly was behind the assassination. Nope, not at all.

[JME2]

Well, that doesn't tell us who exactly was behind the assassination. Nope, not at all.

Nah, it was really Professor Plum in the Study with the Lead Pipe.

[Mr. Coffee]

Dude, everyone knows it was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the wrench. It's ALWAYS Colonel Mustard, geez...

[JME2]

Dude, everyone knows it was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the wrench. It's ALWAYS Colonel Mustard, geez...

[Dave]

SecState Clinton calls the crisis a "bid to subvert justice" etc.

The usual blanket statement from political people, etc, but what I found amusing was the paragraph that read:

"Lebanon needs now to rally behind its own interests. The Lebanese people need to get beyond political party. It's not political parties that would be put on trial, it's individuals," she said.

Replace "Lebanon" with "America" (or any country, really) and it reads the same.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, that doesn't tell us who exactly was behind the assassination. Nope, not at all.

Well, it still doesn't tell us if it was Hezbollah acting on its own, with Syria, or Syria independently, and that's as long as the likely suspect list ever was. Hezbollah would not want an investigation even if the operation was Syrian led simply because Syria is such a huge supporter and munitions supplier for them.

[Talhe]

And it looks like the indictment has been submitted. Things are almost certainly going to become tense over the course of the next few weeks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02611.html

UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. prosecutor on Monday submitted a sealed indictment against suspects in the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, concluding an investigation that has cast suspicion on top Syrian leaders and Hezbollah militants and contributed to the collapse this month of the country's pro-Western government.

Daniel Bellemare, the U.N. tribunal's Canadian prosecutor, filed the indictment under seal late Monday before the court's pretrial judge, Daniel Fransen. It could be at least several weeks before the identities of the suspects are known, and nearly a year before a trial is likely to be held.

The case has roiled Lebanese politics, with widespread anticipation that the prosecutor will name members of the militant movement Hezbollah in connection with the bombing attack that killed the former prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri, and 22 others.

Hezbollah has strongly denied any involvement in the killings.

"The prosecutor has submitted an indictment and supporting materials to the pre-trial judge," said a terse statement issued late Monday by the Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon. "The contents of the indictment remain confidential at this stage."

The head of the Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, has said he would not allow any Hezbollah members to be arrested. The militant group has also said the tribunal is an American and Israeli conspiracy. Nasrallah has defended the group's role in engineering the collapse of the Lebanon's government last week as a necessary measure to protect Lebanon from the consequences of the indictments, adding that the group acted "legally'' and "constitutionally.''



Lebanese officials worry the release of the indictments could ignite sectarian strife in a nation of Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims. The nation has faced intermittent crises since the 2005 attack, whose aftermath has pitted Saad Hariri, who succeeded his father as prime minister as is backed by Saudi Arabia, against Hezbollah, which has strong backing from Syria and Iran.

The bombing triggered a major diplomatic campaign by the United States and France to force Syria, which effectively controlled Lebanon at the time, to withdraw its security forces from the country and to establish an international court to prosecute Hariri's killers.

The U.N. Security Council established an independent commission in 2005 to investigate the assassination of Hariri, and established the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2007 to oversee the trial of suspects. The commission's first prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis of Germany, issued a report in October 2005, linking top Syrian and pro-Lebanese government officials to the crime.

But the the tribunal's key witnesses has been discredited, and it remains unclear whether the Syrian government, one of Hezbollah's chief sponsors, still remains a suspect. Despite the past allegations, Hariri recently absolved Syria of having a hand in his father's deaths.

"There is no precedent for Hezbollah acting in Lebanon on this scale without Syrian advance knowledge and or participation or coordination," said Elias Muhanna, a doctoral candidate at Harvard University who writes the influential blog Qifa Nabki on Lebanon. "But you can't make that argument in a court of law unless you have evidence."

The Lebanese government that collapsed last week was headed by Saad Hariri, who had traveled to New York and Washington to rally international support for the U.N. tribunal. Hariri was forced to cut back his trip after several opposition cabinet members, including members of Hezbollah, withdrew from the coalition government.

Parliamentarians were expected to nominate a new prime minister Monday, but the issue was postponed as the leaders of Syria, Turkey and Qatar met in Damascus on Monday to discuss Lebanon's political crisis. Deep divisions among Lebanon's political leaders could leave Lebanon without a government for weeks, if not months, paralyzing their institutions.

In one sign of the tense environment, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Maura Connelly, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to address concerns about the American role in the process. An embassy spokesman said the ambassador had offered assurances that "the United States does not interfere in Lebanon's internal political matters.''

Hezbollah's al-Manar television has accused Washington of being behind the indictments.