Fears of Shiite-Sunni violence breakout in Lebanon
Source: AP thru yahoo
BEIRUT – No one knows when an international court will issue its first indictments in the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, but Lebanese are already afraid it could spark a wave of violence between its Shiite and Sunni communities.
The Netherlands-based tribunal has kept silent on who it might charge in the 2005 slaying of Rafik Hariri. The fear in Lebanon is that it will accuse members of the powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has fiercely denied any role in the killing, and the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah has warned of a backlash from the heavily armed guerrillas if the court implicates any of its members. He threatened a repeat of clashes that erupted in May 2008, when Hezbollah fighters trounced pro-government gunmen in battles that nearly tipped the country into civil war.
"Let everyone know that what we did on May 7 was only a wave of our hand. We are strong enough we can overturn 10 tables, not only one," Nasrallah said in a July meeting with expatriate Lebanese, according to two newspapers close to the group, Al-Akhbar and As-Safir.
The speculation was sparked by a report in May by the German magazine Der Spiegel, which said the court had evidence that members of Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah were behind the assassination of Hariri, who was Lebanon's most prominent politician since the 1975-1990 civil war ended.
The report did not name its sources, and the court prosecutor's spokeswoman Radhia Achouri refused to comment on it, saying "we don't take into account reports leaked through the media." Hezbollah called the report a "fabrication." Some in Lebanon believe the report was concocted to discredit Hezbollah ahead of June parliament elections that pitted a Hezbollah-led coalition against a Western-backed bloc.
The speculation may also be fueled by confusion over what direction the court will take. Many Lebanese accuse Syria of being behind Hariri's slaying, a claim Damascus denies. Four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals were jailed in Lebanon for nearly four years on suspicion of involvement and were widely expected to be the court's first defendants.
But in April, the court ordered them freed because of insufficient evidence. With their release, there are no obvious suspects in the killing.
Also unknown is when the court will take action. Tribunal spokesman Peter Foster this week said reports in the Lebanese press that indictments would come within months were based on "imagination," but would not give a timeframe. The prosecutor's office has only said the investigation is still ongoing.
Shiites say an indictment against Hezbollah would cause turmoil in Lebanon, where the sectarian divides among the Sunni, Shiite and Christian communities have repeatedly exploded into violence over the past four years. Each community makes up roughly a third of Lebanon's population of 4 million.
Lebanon's top Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah warned in late July of a "major conspiracy to burn the country by plunging it into sectarian strife." He accused Israel of being behind the Der Spiegel report.
Druse politician Walid Jumblatt described the report as "more dangerous than Ein Rummaneh's bus" — a reference to a 1975 attack on a bus in a Beirut suburb that sparked Lebanon's 15-year civil war.
Hariri's assassination in a suicide truck bombing set up a spiral of political turmoil in Lebanon. It led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the end of Damascus' 29-year domination of the country. But that opened the door to a still unresolved struggle for power between pro-Syrian Lebanese led by Hezbollah and pro-Western factions.
The political fight is intertwined with the sectarian divisions since most Sunnis back the pro-Western bloc while most Shiites support the pro-Syrian side. Christians have been divided between the camps. Sporadic clashes between Sunnis and Shiites have killed more than 100 people in Lebanon in recent years.
There has been a relative calm since the May 2008 violence. The pro-Western bloc won the June 7 election, and its leader — prime minister-designate Saad Hariri, the slain Hariri's son — is working to put together a new government.
But there have been flashes of tension. Three weeks after the voting, a gunfight between Hariri supporters and Shiites killed a woman and wounded two other bystanders in a Beirut neighborhood. Fistfights and a stabbing have occurred between followers of Saad Hariri's Future Movement and supporters of Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal.
Hundreds of Lebanese troops remain deployed in tense mixed neighborhoods in the Lebanese capital's Muslim sector.
A senior Hariri loyalist, former lawmaker Mustafa Alloush, said that if an indictment blames Hezbollah elements "that are not connected" to the leadership, the group should hand them over to the tribunal in order for "civil peace not to be affected," he said.
"If they behave in a hostile way in order to cover up this matter, it will for sure lead to an outbreak of violence," he told The Associated Press.
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