Meanwhile, back in the Mideast, debka reports that Washington and Paris have decided to give Boy Assad a shove. Very positive development if true. Who says Bush can't master diplomacy? -g-:
DEBKAfile Reports: Syrian president Assad cancels UN trip for fear of arrest. Panicked Lebanese leaders flee as Syrian agents and Hizballah distribute weapons to Muslims.
August 31, 2005, 11:27 AM (GMT+02:00)
A second wave of arrests of Lebanese security officials was made overnight Tuesday Aug. 30 on the orders of the UN team investigating the Hariri assassination headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. French sources report these officials had access to the weapons the former Lebanese prime minister’s assassins used after they blew up his motorcade last February.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report the Assad regime is in a panic as the UN team’s findings on the murder case come closer to Damascus. In Beirut, the specter of civil war hovers as Syrian agents and Hizballah officers are seen handing out weapons to Muslims – the first sign that Assad has decided to react to the threat closing in on him by igniting fresh civil bloodshed.
Warnings from French intelligence to were conveyed to Lebanese leaders in the last 24 hours to get out of Beirut and take temporary refuge in Paris. “Big events are in the making,” they said. Most Lebanese cabinet ministers, bankers, public figures and newspaper editors accepted the offer. They and Saad Hariri, leader of the ruling party with his family, fled to the French capital.
The sense in Washington and Paris is that both governments are resolved to bring the Assad regime to an end.
Our sources add that the Mehlis probe achieved its second breakthrough when a number of defectors from Syrian and Lebanese security and intelligence services from the time Damascus dominated the country also reached Paris this week. They handed French intelligence incriminating materials and testimony on the part played by the Syrian president and Lebanese president Emil Lahoud in the Hariri murder. A high-ranking French intelligence official told DEBKAfile Wednesday that this evidence and the defectors’ willingness to testify against both presidents provides grounds for international arrest warrants against them.
Also Wednesday, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice interrupted her vacation for a conference with Terje Larsen, the UN secretary’s Middle East envoy who updated her on the latest turn in the Hariri inquiry. The European Union’s external affairs executive Javier Solana, currently visiting Israel was on the point of traveling to Beirut but changed his mind. |
