An Imminent Coup by Hezbollah in Lebanon (?)

[Flecktarn Profile]

has the coup happened yet ,has the group of fat men with ak,s and mustaches siezed power from thr other group of fat men with ak,s and mustaches ,,
i was hopeing it would be the other ones who take control in lebanon ,,,,there the fat ones with mustaches m16s and ak,s

[Proto Profile]

looks like the shit might have just hit the fan in Lebanon .

Lebanon's government falls as Hezbollah pulls out

BEIRUT – Lebanon's national unity government has collapsed after Hezbollah ministers and their allies resigned over a U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the assassination of Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The state-run National News Agency announced Wednesday that 11 ministers were stepping down from the 30-member Cabinet headed by Western-backed Saad Hariri, the slain prime minister's son.

Hezbollah needed the backing of more than a third of the ministers to bring down the government.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110112/ap_ ... ribunal_12

[Proto Profile]

"Hezbollah and other factions are planning to bring down the Lebanese Govt at 10.30AM Eastern with a mass resignation at that time. This is timed to coincide with Obama meeting Hariri of Lebanon in the Oval Office.

It looks like Iran is pushing Hezbollah to take over Beirut and take control of Lebanon. I am hearing US mediterranean forces are on standby to intervene with Marine deployments to prevent a Hezbollah/Iranian coup. Israel have gone on to a war footing. Obviously the last thing they need is a hezbollah controlled Lebanon. France have moved assets into the area too.

Obama and Hariri are in crisis talks after a saudi led peace initiative failed yesterday.

This is all because the UN tribunal is set to deliver a verdict on the Hariri assassination (the father of the current leader) within “hours”. Word on the street is that will be announced after the White House meeting and will implicate Hezbollah as the culprits and issue warrants against their leaders.

Right now it is looking like Hezbollah and Iran will make a power play for Lebanon rather than form a new government democratically. If as expected, this creates a civil war situation in Lebanon, Hariri has asked for US military support!"

[99socks Profile]

"Hezbollah and other factions are planning to bring down the Lebanese Govt at 10.30AM Eastern with a mass resignation at that time. This is timed to coincide with Obama meeting Hariri of Lebanon in the Oval Office.

It looks like Iran is pushing Hezbollah to take over Beirut and take control of Lebanon. I am hearing US mediterranean forces are on standby to intervene with Marine deployments to prevent a Hezbollah/Iranian coup. Israel have gone on to a war footing. Obviously the last thing they need is a hezbollah controlled Lebanon. France have moved assets into the area too.

Obama and Hariri are in crisis talks after a saudi led peace initiative failed yesterday.

This is all because the UN tribunal is set to deliver a verdict on the Hariri assassination (the father of the current leader) within “hours”. Word on the street is that will be announced after the White House meeting and will implicate Hezbollah as the culprits and issue warrants against their leaders.

Right now it is looking like Hezbollah and Iran will make a power play for Lebanon rather than form a new government democratically. If as expected, this creates a civil war situation in Lebanon, Hariri has asked for US military support!"

Wait... How can Hezbollah take over Lebanon if it resigning? I understand that the sudden collective resignations would result in a power vacuum, but how does Hezbollah win by backing out?

You know what I see coming out of this? The Christians. I see even more Christians leaving Lebanon and moving to the West, just like they are leaving Iraq. The fewer religious minorities that are left in the region, the easier it is for Islamic fundamentalism to take over.

[Reinaul Profile]

wow.. thanks for this post proto

[Reinaul Profile]

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press – 22 mins ago

BEIRUT – Lebanon's year-old unity government collapsed Wednesday after Hezbollah ministers and their allies resigned over tensions stemming from a U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The walkout ushers in the country's worst political crisis since 2008 in one of the most volatile corners of the Middle East.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of the slain leader, cut short a visit to Washington after meeting with President Barack Obama. He was heading to Paris where he will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday, his office in Beirut said.

Hariri planned to hold consultations on his government's collapse while in France, then would return to Beirut, according to an official in Hariri's delegation.

Hariri made no public comment after meeting Obama, but the official said Obama offered U.S. support. The official discussed the matter on condition of anonymity due to security and diplomatic concerns.

The tribunal is widely expected to name members of Hezbollah in upcoming indictments, which many fear could re-ignite sectarian tensions that have plagued the tiny country for decades.

"This cabinet has become a burden on the Lebanese, unable to do its work," Energy Minister Jibran Bassil said at a news conference announcing the resignations, flanked by the other ministers who are stepping down. "We are giving a chance for another government to take over."

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has denounced the tribunal as an "Israeli project" and urged the Western-backed prime minister to reject any findings by the court even before it announced any indictments.

But the prime minister has refused to break cooperation with the tribunal.
Hariri's office had no immediate comment on the walkout that brought down his government while he was in Washington.

Labor Minister Butros Harb, who is with the anti-Hezbollah bloc, told reporters after a meeting of Hariri's supporters that they are open to dialogue but "there will be no compromise over justice and the tribunal."

The walkout followed the failure of a diplomatic push by Syria and Saudi Arabia to ease political tensions in Lebanon. There had been few details about the direction of the Syrian-Saudi initiative, but the talks were lauded as a potential Arab breakthrough, rather than a solution offered by Western powers.

Bassil said the ministers decided to resign after Hariri "succumbed to foreign and American pressures" and turned his back on the Syrian-Saudi efforts.

Calls to the tribunal seeking comment Wednesday were not immediately returned.
Hariri formed the current national unity government in November 2009, but it has struggled to function amid deep divisions. The crisis over the tribunal has paralyzed the government in recent months.

Violence has been a major concern as tensions rise in Lebanon, where Shiites, Sunnis and Christians each make up about a third of the country's four million people. In 2008, sectarian clashes killed 81 people and nearly plunged Lebanon into another civil war.
Rafik Hariri's assassination in a suicide bombing that killed 22 other people both stunned and polarized Lebanese. He was a Sunni who was a hero to his own community and backed by many Christians who sympathized with his efforts in the last few months of his life to reduce Syrian influence in the country. A string of assassinations of anti-Syrian politicians and public figures followed, which U.N. investigators have said may have been connected to the Hariri killing.

The Netherlands-based tribunal has not said who it will indict, but Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has said he has information that members of his group will be named.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110112/ap_ ... i_tribunal

[Proto Profile]

Wait... How can Hezbollah take over Lebanon if it resigning? I understand that the sudden collective resignations would result in a power vacuum, but how does Hezbollah win by backing out?

by force ?

rather than form a new government democratically. If as expected, this creates a civil war situation

You know what I see coming out of this? The Christians. I see even more Christians leaving Lebanon and moving to the West, just like they are leaving Iraq. The fewer religious minorities that are left in the region, the easier it is for Islamic fundamentalism to take over.

agreed .

Lebanon in crisis: Hizballah quits government, US-French buildup, Israel on standby

As the Lebanese crisis raced towards it climax, President Barack Obama, Saudi King Abdullah, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri held intense consultations in Washington and New York on a united front against Iran-backed disruptions in Beirut by Hizballah and its allies.
Iran's supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said repeatedly that the STL and its rulings are "null and void" because they serve "foreign interests."

As the US, France and Israel made military and diplomatic preparations to thwart a clash, Obama scheduled a meeting with the Lebanese Prime Minister for Wednesday night, Jan. 12, to decide how the US, France and its allies would act in a conflagration.

Over the weekend, the US president ordered US vessels to buttress the Sixth Fleet stationed in the eastern Mediterranean with the USS Enterprise carrier and its strike group with 6,000 sailors and marines aboard and 80 fighter-bombers. Already deployed there is the USS Bainbridge missile destroyer.

On Monday, Jan. 10, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on a tour of the Persian Gulf, expressed concern over the situation in Lebanon. Clinton said: "I'm deeply worried about the efforts to destabilize Lebanon. We should do everything we can to make sure those warnings are not accurate."

American military moves in the Mediterranean are intended to signal to Tehran and Hizballah that Washington will be prepared to use force to defend the Saad Hariri government in Lebanon and if necessary deploy aerial forces and the marines to avert a Hizballah takeover in Beirut. The French fleet was also ordered to bolster its naval strength opposite Lebanon.

But Hizballah got its move in first. Its resignation from the Hariri government showed that its leaders and Iranian sponsors were not fazed by the US-French military moves off the Lebanese coast and were moving ahead with their plans.

debkafile's military sources add that a comment by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Tuesday, Jan. 11, fit into the picture taking shape in Washington, New York and Paris. He remarked to foreign journalists that 60,000 missiles and rockets, all of Iranian and Syrian origin, were now pointing at Israel.

Last week, Meir Dagan, at a ceremony marking the end of his tenure as head of the Mossad, said that only 10 countries in the world have firepower on a par with that of Hizballah.
According to our sources, it is definitely on the cards for an Iranian-Hizballah move in Lebanon provoking a US-French military response to evolve into a clash between Hizballah and Israel, providing an opportunity for the destruction of Hizballah's might missile arsenal.

http://www.debka.com/article/20538/

[Proto Profile]

Hezbollah's candidate to form Lebanon gov't

The candidate for prime minister backed by Iranian-allied Hezbollah won support from lawmakers Tuesday to form Lebanon's next government, a choice that set off a "day of rage" by Sunnis who burned tires and a van belonging to al-Jazeera to protest the Shiite militant group's rising power.


Billionaire businessman and former premier Najib Mikati won a majority of parliament support in two days of voting, defeating Western-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri as the candidate for the next prime minister. The president will now ask Mikati to try to form a new government that could be controlled by Hezbollah and its allies and give the group an unprecedented level of political power in Lebanon.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah responded to the political developments in a special speech Tuesday afternoon. "These are crucial and sensitive days for Lebanon," he said.

Hariri said on Tuesday he rejected forms of violence and called for calm after his supporters took to the streets in protest against Hezbollah's nomination of Mikati.


"My call for you is a national call. You are angry but you are responsible people. I understand your feelings," he told supporters in a televised speech.
"This anger should not lead us to what disagrees with our values ... our belief that democracy is our refuge," he said.

Hariri's supporters set fire to a vehicle used by Arab television channel al-Jazeera during protests in the northern city of Tripoli on Tuesday, witnesses said.
Journalists from the channel and other reporters said they were taking refuge in a nearby building.

"If the army does not hurry up and help us, we will be in danger," al-Jazeera reporter Majed Abdel-Hadi said in a live call broadcast by the channel.

Thousands of Hariri loyalists called for a "day of rage" after Hezbollah and its allies, who toppled Hariri's government two weeks ago in a dispute about indictments in the investigation of his father's killing, won support for Mikati to replace him.


"Sunni blood is boiling", chanted some protesters, burning pictures of Mikati, a Sunni, and waving blue flags of Hariri's Future Movement, which says it will not serve in any government dominated by the militant Shiite group.



Lebanon's power-sharing political system calls for the post of prime minister to be held by a Sunni, and Hariri supporters said any figure who accepted the nomination from Hezbollah to form a new government would be considered a traitor.

In southern Beirut, protesters blocked a road with burning tyres and overturned garbage containers, and a security source said shots were fired in the air when the army intervened. No injuries were reported.
Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman started a second day of consultations on Tuesday with Lebanese parliamentarians to name a prime minister to lead the new government.


Mikati has secured the crucial backing of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, swinging the balance of power in his favour and won endorsement on Tuesday from another prominent Sunni politician, Mohammed Safadi.


Hezbollah and its allies walked out of Hariri's unity government on Jan. 12 in a dispute over still confidential indictments by a UN-backed tribunal which is investigating the 2005 killing of statesman Rafik al-Hariri, the premier's father.

The political deadlock has deepened sectarian divisions in Lebanon, and Hariri supporters protested in several cities on Monday, burning tyres and blocking streets.

Politicians allied to Hezbollah have said the first priority of a government they form would be to cut links with the tribunal, which is expected to accuse Hezbollah members of involvement in the 2005 killing. Hezbollah denies any role.

The demonstrators in Tripoli called for Mikati, a telecoms tycoon who comes from the northern port city, to withdraw his nomination and said the investigation in Rafik Hariri's killing could not be blocked.
One poster read, "Tripoli will not accept the overthrow of the international tribunal."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 34,00.html

[99socks Profile]

Iran: 1
Saudi Arabia: 0