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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (262159)	11/26/2005 11:50:47 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573215

A wintry wind blows in Damascus November 26, 2005 Page 1 of 2 IF STREET protests are signs of freedom on the march then right now you could be forgiven for thinking that Syria is going through a revolution. Little convoys of cars pass at intervals along Damascus's broad, traffic-clogged arterial highways, honking horns and waving flags, just as they did in Lebanon when people-power rallies brought down an unpopular government this year. Protest tents have sprung up in key public spaces, just as they did in Beirut following the murder in February of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, so that people have somewhere to make their views heard. But in Damascus, the only views that can be aired are those in favour of the Government. And while hundreds of thousands of people flooded the squares of Beirut, here the demonstrations are small and half-hearted, usually just a score or two of dutiful Baath party supporters showing the flag. In the evening rush hour, with the chill wind blowing down off the Golan Heights, most ordinary Damascenes just hurry past without sparing the demonstrators more than a glance or two. Beirut enjoyed its spring this year; Syrians worry about the winter to come. The source of their unease is the continuing fall-out from the assassination of Mr Hariri, who died with 22 others when a massive bomb destroyed a Beirut city block on February 14. Two separate United Nations investigations have since suggested that the killing was the work of Syrian agents, angered by Mr Hariri's leading role in a campaign to end Syria's military domination of Lebanon. If so, the attack failed spectacularly, creating a rare alliance at the United Nations between the US and France - the colonial power in Syria and Lebanon between the first and second world wars - that quickly forced Damascus to end its lucrative control of wealthier Lebanon. Humiliatingly forced to comply with a UN resolution ordering withdrawal, President Bashar al-Assad's government was then faced with a second resolution requiring it to co-operate - on pain of international sanctions - with an inquiry by the German investigator Detlev Mehlis to find Mr Hariri's killers. Last month Mr Mehlis's interim report concluded there was reason to believe that Syrian agents were responsible, and he demanded to be allowed to question six unnamed Syrian security officials before making his final report on December 15. Mr Assad - an initially reluctant autocrat whose succession in 2000 led to short-lived hopes for a reformist "Damascus Spring" - is showing signs of reverting to the older and more confrontational school of Arabist politics of his late father, Hafez. In a key televised speech two weeks ago Mr Assad threatened to crack down on those who raise their voices against the Government while it is under foreign attack. He taunted Lebanon's new Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, as "a slave who takes orders from a slave who takes orders" - referring to Mr Siniora's main sponsor, Mr Hariri's son and political heir, Saad. So who in turn does Mr Hariri take his orders from? Ask any Baath supporter. "The killing of Hariri is part of an American plan," explains Moutaz Hassan, 28, one of a group of fresh-faced youngsters and watchful men manning the Beirut-style protest tent sponsored by the Syrian Public Relations Association in the heart of Damascus's diplomatic district. "They started with Afghanistan, continued in Iraq and now it's Syria. They want all our countries to be small cantons controlled by Israel, but the American people don't know what their government is doing." "Hariri was a big businessman so it was either some business mafia or some radical fundamentalists [who killed him]," says Elias Murad, editor in chief of the ruling party's newspaper, Al-Baath. "But of course these groups may have been linked to foreign powers or a strong state that has the ability and the facilities … there was an Israeli surveillance plane on the day Hariri was assassinated, the same day and the same hour. We are only certain that Syria is not the country that carried it out. It is one of the countries harmed the most by it." In recent months human rights and democracy activists have reported an upsurge in surveillance, harassment, assaults and detentions. "Everyone is worried now," says Anwar al-Bounni, a leading human rights lawyer who was beaten up by pro-regime thugs last month. "They don't know if this regime will stay and fight, what the future will be. Maybe war, maybe sanctions. And if the regime changes they are worried about what will replace it." With American forces now floundering in Iraq a US invasion - which to many seemed imminent only two years ago - is now almost out of the question. But the more likely prospect of international sanctions is threat enough for most. continued...................... smh.com.au