Lebanese parliament passes electoral law amending 1960 legislation

Sunni leader views Assad's statements as hindering normalization with Lebanon

France denies mandating Syria to return to Lebanon

Hariri assassination fact-finding committee says didn't leak suspects' names

The Lebanese parliament adopted a new electoral law overnight in a key move aimed at paving the way for legislative polls due early next year.

The move was the final step of a peace deal struck in May between Lebanon's rival pro- and anti-Syrian factions to end an 18-month political crisis that had brought the country to the brink of civil war.

The legislation, which amends one adopted in 1960, calls for several reforms including the redrawing of electoral districts and the holding of elections in one day rather than over several days.

Parliament, however, rejected several proposed reforms such as lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, introducing a quota for women in parliament and allowing Lebanese citizens living abroad to cast ballots.

Under the new law Lebanese expatriates will be allowed to vote in 2013.

The peace accord struck in the Qatari capital Doha in May had called for a new electoral law, following the election of army chief Michel Suleiman as president and the formation of a national unity government.

The deal also called for a national dialogue between rival political leaders. A first session was held earlier this month and a second one is scheduled for November 5.

Parliament’s majority leader Saad Hariri has lashed out at Syria in the wake of a deadly car bombing targeting the Lebanese army, accusing Damascus of posing “a clear and direct threat” to Lebanon.

“The Lebanese will not let Bashar al-Assad’s words go unnoticed,” Hariri said, reacting to comments by the Syrian president.

Assad told the head of Lebanon’s journalists union, Melhem Karam, that northern Lebanon had become a base for extremists and posed a threat to his country.

“His words are a clear and direct threat to the sovereignty of Lebanon and the north in particular,” Hariri said.

He said Assad’s underlying message was that Lebanon, and the northern region in particular that has been gripped by sectarian fighting, was to blame for insecurity in Syria.

Hariri also denounced last week’s deployment of Syrian troops along Lebanon’s northern borders, charging that the aim was to terrorize the Lebanese rather than crack down on smuggling.

He urged the international community not to allow Syria to intervene in Lebanese affairs under the guise of fighting extremism.

After the assassination of Hariri’s father, ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri, in a 2005 car bombing, Damascus was forced to pull its troops out of Lebanon following a 29-year deployment although it denied charges of involvement.

The death toll in the bombing has risen to seven with two men dying from their wounds, security sources said.

Last week's bomb attack targeted a bus transporting troops in the northern city of Tripoli. Four of those killed were soldiers. The others were civilians.

There have been no claims of responsibility for the attack, the second against the military in the city in less than two months. An August 13 bomb killed 15 people, 10 of them soldiers, at a bus stop in Tripoli.

There were no claims of responsibility for that attack either, although investigators suspected Islamist militant involvement early in their inquiry. The August 13 attack was the deadliest day for the army since its 15-week battle last year with Al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants based at a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem called for security cooperation with neighboring Lebanon to boost the border area in combating arms smuggling, a pan-Arab newspaper reported on Wednesday.

There was smuggling both to and from Lebanon and Syria's frontier with Lebanon cannot be controlled without security collaboration with Beirut, Muallem was quoted by the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper as saying.

"The question of the border between Syria and Lebanon needs two actions: delineation (of border) and Syrian-Lebanese security cooperation," Muallem said.

Muallem also restated Damascus' rejection that Syria is the main transit route for weapons to Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah, the only Lebanese group keeping their weapons away from state control.

A UN Security Council resolution, which put to an end the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, appealed to Beirut to tighten border check to contain arms smuggling.

During Lebanese President Michel Suleiman's visit to Syria in August, the two neighboring countries announced that they agreed to normalize bilateral ties and demarcate their borders.

Bilateral ties between Syria and Lebanon have been chilled since the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, which many blamed Damascus for being behind, but Syria denied any role.

Syria and Lebanon have not established diplomatic relations since their independence from the French colonial rule in the 1940s.

The US government has warned Syria against any attempt to restore its formerly dominant position in Lebanon, the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat said Arab and Western diplomatic sources quoted by Al-Hayat said Damascus had asked Beirut for security cooperation to control the common borders between the two countries.

The issue was raised during a meeting between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and another meeting between Muallem and David Welch, the US assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week.

According to Al-Hayat sources, Rice told Muallem that Syria would pay a "political price" should it seek to renew its military presence in Lebanon.

The sources said Rice and Welch warned Muallem that it was not right for Syrian forces to cross the border and enter Lebanese territory because this would be a violation of Lebanese sovereignty and international resolutions and would earn Syria political sanctions.

The sources added that Muallem had been surprised by these claims. "We are not at all considering interfering with Lebanon, but we seek security cooperation to control the borders, stop smuggling and disband fundamentalist groups," he was quoted as saying.

The minister added that security cooperation between two neighbor states was a legitimate request.

Muallem told the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper there was smuggling both to and from Lebanon - which Syria dominated until 2005 when it was forced to withdraw troops from its smaller neighbor.

"The question of the border between Syria and Lebanon needs two actions: delineation [of the frontier] and Syrian-Lebanese security cooperation," Muallem was quoted as saying. "Nobody can control the borders with Lebanon."

Al-Mustaqbal newspaper reported on Thursday that France denied any "green light granted to Syria in Lebanon." The daily said France stressed its support for Lebanon's sovereignty and stability.

Meanwhile, quoting what were described as well-informed French diplomatic sources, the Central News Agency (CNA) said that France was not worried about the situation in Lebanon.

The sources added that Lebanon and Syria should work on "strengthening their common borders each from their own side of the border."

Al-Hayat sources said Damascus denied claims by some Lebanese parties that "sooner or later" Syria would restore its military presence in the country. The sources cited Syrian President Bashar Assad as saying during recent meetings with some Lebanese opposition figures that there was no intention to restore Syria's military presence in Lebanon, adding that a strategy for security cooperation was needed to fight terrorism, in particular after the appointment of new officials in Lebanon' military and security services.

According to Al-Hayat sources, security cooperation sought by Syria would include a series of measures to fight terrorism and stop smuggling across illegal border points in the North and the Bekaa Valley.

A Syrian troop buildup on the Lebanon border and comments by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad about extremist threats have stoked fears that Damascus may be planning to reassert control over its tiny neighbor.

"Without a doubt, we are very worried about there being 10,000 troops at the Lebanese border," MP and former social affairs minister Nayla Moawad told AFP.

Syria said it sent reinforcements to the border as part of a crackdown on smuggling, but the anti-Syrian camp in Lebanon has voiced concerns about its true motive. "When there is a military buildup on one side of a border between two countries, the other country has cause for concern," said Moawad.

Saad Hariri, leader of the anti-Syrian majority in parliament, charged that the aim was to intimidate the people of Lebanon, which was under Syrian political and military domination for three decades until 2005.

Worries in Beirut deepened at comments by Assad in an interview last week that northern Lebanon had turned into "a base for extremists" and "posed a threat" to his country.

"His words are a clear and direct threat to the sovereignty of Lebanon," Hariri said, arguing that the underlying message was that north Lebanon, which has been gripped by sectarian clashes, was to blame for insecurity in Syria.

Hariri's comments came after a car bombing last week in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli that killed four soldiers and three civilians, in the second bombing against the Lebanese army there in as many months.

A rare suicide bombing in Damascus killed 17 people, with authorities blaming a "terrorist" linked to unnamed Islamist extremists.

Syria was forced to pull its troops out of Lebanon after a 29-year deployment following the assassination of Hariri's father, ex-premier Hariri, in a massive 2005 car bombing. Syria denies involvement in the attack.

"In Lebanon, many believe that Syria has allowed extremists to infiltrate the border as they are thought to have done in Iraq," said Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East expert at Chatham House in London.

"Since its withdrawal, Syria has been keen to show that Lebanon is not viable without its control," Shehadi added.

While the United States continues to accuse Damascus of sponsoring terrorism, Damascus counters that Syria itself has become a victim of terror.

"There are Islamic extremists coming over our borders," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in comments published in the Wall Street Journal.

Syria's support for Russia when its troops rolled into Georgia in August after Tbilisi tried to reclaim control of the Moscow-backed rebel province of South Ossetia also raised eyebrows in Lebanon.

"Let's not forget Syria's position on the Russian intervention in Georgia," said Moawad.

During a visit to Moscow in August, Assad said: "We understand Russia's military reaction and view it as a response to military provocation by Georgia."

Syria's stance raised fears in Lebanon that Damascus might make a similar move on its neighbor.

But Shehadi said: "I don't think Syria will be able to intervene militarily in Lebanon anymore."

Nonetheless, Hariri urged the international community not to allow Syria to use extremism as a pretext to meddle in Lebanese affairs.

"The Syrian leadership is searching for any reason to disrupt the course to the normalization of relations between the two countries," Hariri said.

Lebanon and Syria agreed to establish diplomatic relations for the first time at a summit in Paris in July but Although Lebanese President Michel Suleiman paid a visit to Damascus last month, embassies have yet to be opened.

"If Syria had good intentions, it would have released them by now," said Shehadi, referring to Syrian activists behind bars who signed a 2006 document calling for Syrian recognition of Lebanon's independence.

Meanwhile, The names of those implicated in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will not be made public by the United Nations commission tasked with investigating the killing, but will instead be passed to prosecutors at an international tribunal who will consider the evidence against them, a spokesperson for the panel says.

The names of people the UN believes were involved in the assassination - rumored to number around 120 - will only be released when the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues indictments for the crime. There had been speculation that the names could be released before being passed to the tribunal, when the head of the UN investigation into Hariri's death, Daniel Bellemare, makes his final report on December 2. However, this notion was rejected by the commission's spokesperson.

"As Commissioner Daniel Bellemare stated in April 2008 when he presented his first report to the UN Security Council, no names will be disclosed by the commission throughout the duration of its mandate," Radhya Achouri said.

"Names will only be [made public] once indictments are issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon when and if sufficient evidence is established for issuing indictments," she added.

Her statement came after newspaper reports speculated that the names would be released along with a mass of information about how the killing was carried out.

Al-Anwar daily said that investigators had divided the suspects into four categories - planner, executor, interferer and information withholder - depending on their role in the plot.

The newspaper claimed that the final UN report would cause a "political earthquake" in Beirut by confirming that high-ranking officials were involved in the death of the former prime minister, who died along with 22 others in a massive car bomb explosion in Beirut in February 2005.

The newspaper said that the killers made at least three practice "dry runs" before putting their plan, which involved a suicide bomber detonating an enormous bomb, into action. The killing took about eight months to plan, the paper said, and senior members of the security services were aware of the plot.

It cites wiretap telephone evidence in which a suspect said: "It's over. We got rid of him."

The UN investigation into the killing began at the request of the government in the months after Hariri's death. When the commission finishes its reporting process, a special tribunal will swing into action, initially considering the evidence gathered by the commission, before indicting and eventually trying suspects under Lebanese law.

Over the past three years, the commission has released periodical reports on its progress. Earlier this year it said it believed a criminal group - dubbed the "Hariri network" - had planned and executed the assassination after conducting surveillance on the former prime minister. But the report did not say whether the evidence suggested the motive was political.

Previous UN reports have said that they believed Syrian intelligence services had played a role in the assassination, an allegation that Damascus has always strongly denied. Four high-ranking Lebanese security officials were arrested in 2005 in connection to the assassination and are still being held over their suspected involvement. The United Nations has refused to comment on their detention, saying that it is a matter for the Lebanese government to resolve.

In Tel Aviv, A senior Israeli military commander said on Friday that any Hezbollah strike would bring "enormous destruction" on Lebanon that would exceed that caused by the 2006 war, without elaborating why would Hezbollah initiate a strike in the first place.

"What happened in Beirut in 2006 will occur in every village that fires on Israel," Major General Gadi Eisenkot, the top commander in northern Israel, said in an interview with Israel's mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"Firing from the villages of Lebanon would cause a disaster, and (Hezbollah chief Hassan) Nasrallah has an interest in thinking 30 times before giving such an order," he added.

"We will use disproportionate force against these villages and cause enormous destruction because from our point of view these are not villages but military bases."

He added that the policy of massive retaliation would be employed against other regional foes should they carry out a first strike on Israel, saying "what applies to Hezbollah applies even more to Syria."

Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli prisons.

The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap earlier this year. The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.