Group items tagged

With Sunnis largely aligned with the incumbent government coalition and Shias solidly behind the Hezbollah-led opposition, Christians, who make up nearly 40% of Lebanon's 3.26m eligible voters, provide the crucial swing vote.

There were widespread reports of vote-buying before the poll, with some Lebanese expatriates being offered free air tickets home. Though voting passed off largely without incident, tensions in the capital and the battleground Christian towns remained high, with the army imposing a midnight curfew on the capital.

Christian leader Michel Aoun redrew the political map in 2005 when he forged an unlikely alliance with Hezbollah, weathering fierce criticism from opponents. Aoun's party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) could have delivered victory to Hezbollah's coalition if it had gained 10 extra seats in the 128-member parliament, which is divided equally between Muslims and Christians. The FPM has defended its alliance with Hezbollah as helping to stabilise Lebanon rather than give Hezbollah a platform for renewed conflict with Israel.

Votes are being bought with cash or in-kind services. Candidates pay their competitors huge sums to withdraw. The price of favorable TV news coverage is rising, and thousands of expatriate Lebanese are being flown home, free, to vote in contested districts. The payments, according to voters, election monitors and various past and current candidates interviewed for this article, nurture a deep popular cynicism about politics in Lebanon, which is nominally perhaps the most democratic Arab state but in practice is largely governed through patronage and sectarian and clan loyalty.

Despite the vast amounts being spent, many Lebanese see the race — which pits Hezbollah and its allies against a fractious coalition of more West-friendly political groups — as almost irrelevant. Lebanon’s sectarian political structure virtually guarantees a continuation of the current “national unity” government, in which the winning coalition in the 128-seat Parliament grants the loser veto powers to preserve civil peace.

Still, even a narrow win by Hezbollah and its allies, now in the parliamentary opposition, would be seen as a victory for Iran — which has financed Hezbollah for decades — and a blow to American allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt. So the money flows.

“We are putting a lot into this,” said one adviser to the Saudi government, who added that the Saudi contribution was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in a country of only four million people. “We’re supporting candidates running against Hezbollah, and we’re going to make Iran feel the pressure.”

As it happens, Lebanon has campaign spending limits this year for the first time, and the Arab world’s first system to monitor that spending, by the Lebanese chapter of Transparency International. But the limits — which are very loose to begin with — apply only in the last two months of the campaign. And they are laughably easy to circumvent, according to election monitors and Lebanese officials.

Reformers have tried and failed to introduce a uniform national ballot, which could reduce the influence of money and make the system less vulnerable to fraud. Currently, political parties or coalitions usually print up their own distinctive ballots and hand them to voters before they walk into the booth, making it easier to be sure they are getting the votes they have paid for.

Some voters, especially in competitive districts, receive cold calls offering cash for their vote. But mostly the political machines work through local patriarchs known as “electoral keys,” who can deliver the votes of an entire clan in exchange for money or services — scholarships, a hospital, repaved roads and so on.

In fact, many poorer Lebanese look to the elections as a kind of Christmas, when cash, health-care vouchers, meals and other handouts are abundant.

The largess extends across the globe. From Brazil to Australia, thousands of expatriates are being offered free plane trips back home to vote. Saad Hariri, the billionaire leader of the current parliamentary majority and a Saudi ally, is reputed to be the biggest election spender. It may not have helped that he kicked off his campaign with a gaudy televised event that resembled the set of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” But members of his movement say that the accusation is unfair, and that their own money is outmatched by the hundreds of millions of dollars Iran has given to Hezbollah over the years.

Saad Hariri loudly blamed Syria for the plot. But over recent months he has tempered his criticism and last month said he hoped the tribunal would find Israel responsible for the killing. Subsequently, however, he maintained his claim that the culprits were Syrian.

At the time of the attack, it was known that Hariri, a billionaire construction magnate who was responsible for the reconstruction of the Lebanese capital after decades of civil war, wanted to reenter politics. It was also known that he had had a falling out with Syrian President Bashar Assad after demanding the withdrawal of Syrian occupation forces from his native Lebanon. As a result, the prime suspects in the murder were the powerful Syrian military and intelligence agency, as well as their Lebanese henchmen. The pressure on Damascus came at an opportune time for the US government. Then-President George W. Bush had placed Syria on his list of rogue states and wanted to isolate the regime internationally.

The establishment of a UN special tribunal was intended to provide certainty. It began its work on March 1, 2009. The tribunal, headquartered in the town of Leidschendam in the Netherlands, has a budget of more than €40 million ($56 million) for the first year alone, with the UN paying 51 percent and Beirut 49 percent of the cost. It has an initial mandate for three years, and the most severe sentence it can impose is life in prison. Canadian Daniel Bellemare, 57, was appointed to head the tribunal. Four of the 11 judges are Lebanese, whose identities have been kept secret, for security reasons.

As its first official act, the tribunal ordered the release, in early April, of the four men Mehlis had had arrested. By then, they had already spent more than three years sitting in a Lebanese prison.

Intensive investigations in Lebanon are all pointing to a new conclusion: that it was not the Syrians, but instead special forces of the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah ("Party of God") that planned and executed the diabolical attack. Tribunal chief prosecutor Bellemare and his judges apparently want to hold back this information, of which they been aware for about a month.

a secretly operating special unit of the Lebanese security forces, headed by intelligence expert Captain Wissam Eid, filtered out the numbers of mobile phones that could be pinpointed to the area surrounding Hariri on the days leading up to the attack and on the date of the murder itself. The investigators referred to these mobile phones as the "first circle of hell."

They were apparently tools of the hit team that carried out the terrorist attack.

there was also a "second circle of hell," a network of about 20 mobile phones that were identified as being in proximity to the first eight phones noticeably often. According to the Lebanese security forces, all of the numbers involved apparently belong to the "operational arm" of Hezbollah, which maintains a militia in Lebanon that is more powerful than the regular Lebanese army.

The romantic attachment of one of the terrorists led the cyber-detectives directly to one of the main suspects. He committed the unbelievable indiscretion of calling his girlfriend from one of the "hot" phones. It only happened once, but it was enough to identify the man. He is believed to be Abd al-Majid Ghamlush, from the town of Rumin, a Hezbollah member who had completed training course in Iran. Ghamlush was also identified as the buyer of the mobile phones. He has since disappeared, and perhaps is no longer alive.

Palestinians have been here for more than 60 years - since the creation of Israel - but they are still barred from at least 70 professions, have no access to state education or healthcare, and cannot move freely or buy land. These conditions turn the Palestinian camps into a breeding ground for extremism, a time bomb which will inevitably explode according to a recent report by the think tank, the International Crisis Group.

Those accused of being spies are said to have used sophisticated surveillance equipment and satellite phones, sometimes ingeniously disguised in crutches or knapsacks. One of them, a car dealer in southern Lebanon, placed Israeli tracking devices in cars he sold to Hezbollah members, security officials say. Most seem to have been motivated by the promise of money. Some were caught by Hezbollah before being handed over to the Lebanese authorities.

The arrests have even become an issue in Lebanon’s coming parliamentary elections, with some analysts saying that, intentionally or not, they might benefit the political alliance led by Hezbollah, Israel’s primary nemesis here. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered an angry speech on Friday in which he called for all the captured spies to be executed and urged the Lebanese to help in capturing any remaining agents.

One of the important ones, the general said, was Ziyad Homsi. Mr. Homsi, 61, was the deputy mayor of Saadnayel, a town in the Bekaa Valley. According to a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al Safir, which has links to Hezbollah, Mr. Homsi had told interrogators he was assigned to meet Mr. Nasrallah, which he apparently failed to do. Israeli monitors planned to track his movements as he went to meet the Hezbollah leader.

Mr Obama has said he wants to broker a peace deal with Syria and Israel to end decades of regional conflict. Improved relations with the US could mean a lifting of sanctions and many new business deals - something many ordinary Syrians are hoping for.

Damascus, where the United States still does not have an ambassador, remains a key regional player, says the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus. It has an influence over events in Lebanon; it shares a crucial border with Iraq; it has a significant relationship with the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip; and it is a close ally of Iran, he says. But above all it wants Syria to push Hamas along the road to Palestinian unity - and ultimately Washington would like to woo Damascus away from Tehran.

    Kouchner, who will meet Lebanese officials and Leaders, said that the cabinet formation in Lebanon is "an internal issue for the Lebanese to do without the help of anyone."