The Gig is up Syrian bitches!
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Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami announced his government’s resignation Monday, prompting a cheer from more than 25,000 flag-waving opposition demonstrators protesting the government and its Syrian backers a few hundred meters away.
I am keen that the government will not be a hurdle in front of those who want the good for this country. I declare the resignation of the government that I had the honor to head. May God preserve Lebanon," Karami said.
The resignation was the most dramatic moment yet in the series of protests and political maneuvers that have shaken Lebanon since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Some 20,000 anti-Syrian protesters took to Beirut’s streets Monday to demand the resignation of the government, in defiance of a government ban against demonstrations.
Inside the nearby parliament building, opposition legislators made the same call, with one accusing the government of negligence in Hariri’s assassination on February 14.
Hamadeh demanded the dismissal of three chiefs of Lebanese intelligence, the head of the police and the commander of the Presidential Guards.
“You are not more immune than Milosevic and the top Bosnian and Croat military commanders,” Hamadeh said, referring to the killers of Hariri and the war crimes trial of former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
It was the first time the legislature had discussed the assassination of Hariri, who was killed with 16 other people by a massive explosion as his motorcade drove through central Beirut.
The session began with a moment of silence for the slain legislator. Legislators stood for another moment of silence at 12:55 (1055GMT), the exact time Hariri was killed two weeks ago.
In Martyr’s Square, some 200 meters from parliament, the demonstrators waved hundreds of Lebanese flags, clambered on to the plinth of the martyrs’ statue, and prayed in front of candles at the flower-covered grave of Hariri, which lies at the edge of the piazza.
The demonstrators also demanded the withdrawal of Syria’s 15,000 troops in Lebanon, chanting: “We want no other army in Lebanon except the Lebanese army!”
Israel Radio reported Monday that Beirut’s government had agreed to resign last week, but that the commander of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon had forbade it from doing so.
The assassination of Hariri has intensified world and Lebanese opposition pressure for a withdrawal of Syria’s forces, who came to Lebanon ostensibly as peace-keepers during the 1975-90 civil war.
Hundreds of soldiers and police ringed the square early Monday in a bid to enforce the government’s ban on protests. But they made no serious effort to disperse the demonstrators, many of whom had slept in the square. Some soldiers and police even sympathized with the demonstrators, and were seen advising newcomers on how to evade the cordon.
“You can tell from the looks in the soldiers’ eyes, and from their smiles, their true stand,” said Hamadeh, who was in the square before going to parliament. Hamadeh himself was the target of a bomb attack in October that killed his driver.
Karami had asked parliament for a vote of confidence, outlining what his pro-Syrian government had done and promising to hold legislative elections as scheduled in April and May.
Hariri’s sister, legislator Bahiya Hariri, addressed the parliament in black and called on the government to resign.
“All the Lebanese want to know their enemy, the enemy of Lebanon who killed the martyr Rafik Hariri, those who took the decision, planned and executed it, those who ignored and prevented the truth from coming out,” Bahiya said, holding back tears.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose government dominates its Lebanese neighbor, said in an interview published Monday that a withdrawal from Lebanon required a settlement with Israel.
“Under a technical point of view, the withdrawal can happen by the end of the year,” Assad told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “But under a strategic point of view, it will only happen if we obtain serious guarantees. In one word: peace.”
Syria said Thursday it would redeploy its troops to eastern Lebanon, closer to its border, but they would not leave Lebanon. By Monday, there was no sign of the redeployment having begun.
Visiting U.S. State Department David Satterfield kept up Washington’s pressure on Syria by demanding Damascus withdraw its troops from Lebanon “as soon as possible” and ends its involvement in Lebanese affairs.
Satterfield met Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud on Monday to reiterate Washington’s demand for Syrian troops to leave.
“The time has come for the Lebanese people to be able to face their own national decisions,” Satterfield told reporters afterward.
Hariri was seen as quietly opposing Syria’s control over Lebanon. He had been expected to stand in parliamentary elections in April or May against Karami.
Opposition leader Walid Jumblatt urged legislators to vote against the government Monday, saying that if the confidence vote is passed, it would be “another assassination of Hariri.”
Security forces did manage Monday to stop protesters from reaching the Prime Minister’s office, which was cordoned off by soldiers, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.
Hundreds of troops, many in armored personnel carriers, set up roadblocks at entrances to central Beirut, turning back flag-waving teenagers, reducing traffic to a trickle, and making the city appear as if it were under siege.
The debate in parliament began late as many legislators were delayed by the traffic jams. Many commuters abandoned their cars on the side of the road and walked through the roadblocks to the city center.
Lebanon says it will cooperate with United Nations investigators currently in Beirut but has refused a full foreign investigation of the killing. Despite official Lebanese and Syrian denials of involvement in Hariri’s death, the attack has plunged Lebanon into its worst political crisis in years.
Opposition and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt vowed to continue protests until the government falls.
“We want the truth. Who killed Rafik Hariri?” he said in a telephone interview on Hariri’s Future television. He urged the people to “go down today, tomorrow, for a month or two months until the regime falls.”
Syria said Thursday it would pull its forces eastward toward its border but will not bring them home. There has been no visible Syrian military movement to the eastern Bekaa Valley in line with a 1989 Arab-brokered agreement that ended the 1975-1990 civil war.
The U.S. State Department has said a withdrawal toward Syria’s border was not good enough.
