Non-toxic assets

The AFP news agency reports:

Lebanon's banking sector is weathering the global financial crisis and profits are expected to increase by 10 percent this year, the Central Bank governor said, in a reflection of the country's ability to rebound from a legacy of adversity.

Riad Salameh attributed the growth in the banking sector, which comes at a time when a liquidity crisis has gutted some of the world's top banking giants, to strict regulations imposed by the Central Bank, including a cash reserve requirement of 15 percent.

The strength of the country's banks is largely a reflection of the country's resilience as it has repeatedly looked to rebuild after years of conflict and instability turned broad swaths of Beirut into a gutted battleground with different areas controlled by competing militias and armies.

"There are no toxic assets in our banking sector and that has created a comfort to the markets and to depositors," he said.

Salameh said private banks' assets currently top $100 billion, or nearly four times the country's gross domestic product. Foreign currency and other assets held by the Central Bank have risen steadily to nearly $20 billion.

Most of the country's banks have reported an increase in deposits and profits in the first nine months the year, he said.
Bank Audi, Lebanon's largest in assets and deposits, announced last month that its net profits for the first nine months of 2008 increased by 28.7 percent, to $180.6 million, compared to the same period a year ago.

****

Picture: Hussein Malla/Associated Press. An employee at the Central Bank of Lebanon stacks bricks of Lira... there is lots of cash going through the system, but how much of it stops in the country?

Armoured cars and tanks and guns...

"The United States is planning to boost its military support to Lebanon’s army with high-tech tanks," writes Raed Rafei in the LA Times:

The Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported last Friday that the United States was going to provide Lebanon with dozens of M60 battle tanks to be shipped in batches starting early 2009.

The assault tanks in question are all-purpose vehicles with advanced firepower and mobility at night and under conditions of limited visibility.

[The deal] coincides with the visit of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James Robert Clapper.

He is responsible for overseeing and providing policy and budgetary guidance to defense intelligence agencies.

In past years, the US has significantly boosted its military aid to Lebanon, providing the army with ammunition, communication devices and Humvees. But Lebanese military experts say that this kind of military assistance is not enough to lift the capacity of an army with ailing equipment.

Israeli military officials reportedly frowned upon the alleged offer.

"There is a possibility these tanks will fall into Hezbollah's hands," one official told the Jerusalem Post. "At the moment, Hezbollah does not yet have heavy armor in its arsenal."

But some military officials toned down the impact of these weapons.

"Hezbollah's strength is that it is a guerrilla force that does not operate in a conventional manner," another official told the Israeli daily. "Tanks are easy targets from the air and from the ground."

Meanwhile Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Hizbollah had greatly improved its capabilities since the 2006 war.

"Hezbollah has three times the ability it had before the Second Lebanon War and now has 42,000 missiles in its possession, as opposed to the 14,000 it had before the war," Barak said.

He warned that in view of Hezbollah’s integration into the Lebanese government, Israel would bomb Lebanon’s infrastructure in case of a military confrontation between the two countries.

Hezbollah ruled out this possibility anytime soon.

****

Picture: The M60 battle tank. Designed 1960. Even though it has some new bits added on, it is primarily a siege gun.

End of the death penalty?

Mona Alami reports on plans for Lebanon to abolish the death penalty.

The Lebanese government will use television to gain maximum attention for its plan to abolish the death penalty, giving one station the first right to question Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar about the details of an abolition bill which will be eventually presented to parliament.

News of plans to abolish the death penalty was first made public on Oct. 10, the World Day against the Death Penalty.

On the same day, Najjar informed the cabinet of the details. A brief official press statement said then that the proposal was to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment with hard labour.

Abolishing the death penalty was in line with Lebanon's religious and humanitarian values, as well as its legal culture, Najjar said at the time.

"Preventive measures are more effective than the death penalty in reducing crime," he said.

The abolition bill comes after years of campaigning by anti-death penalty activists.

"I am confident that it is only a matter of time before the law is passed," Walid Sleybi, head of the Lebanese Association for Civil Rights, told IPS.

"Society should not be allowed to sit back and look at the killing of people, even if they are found guilty of a crime. A crime should never be punished by another crime.

"Recent studies have shown that capital punishment does not contribute to curbing crime levels. On the contrary, people tend to resort to violence when they see the state itself committing the ultimate crime."

Sleybi has long struggled to implement civil rights initiatives in Lebanon, promoting non-violent movements and battling against sectarianism with fellow-activist Ugarit Younan. In 1997, Sleybi published the book The Death Penalty Kills, a critique of capital punishment.

In 2004, the movement against capital punishment, which includes seven MPs such as long-time activist Ghassan Mokhaiber, also proposed a bill to abolish the death penalty.

However, the adverse political situation after the 2005 assassination of prime minister Rafik Hariri and the ensuing paralysis of parliament until recently prevented it ever being put to a vote.

"We have new hope now that parliament is reconvening on a regular basis," Sleybi said.

He added that executions in Lebanon had often been tied to politics.

"Presidents have often used the death penalty as an instrument to reaffirm power and control over the state, especially after the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. This was best illustrated during the term of President Elias Hrawi (1989 to 1998), which witnessed the highest number of executions," Sleybi said.

Global goes local

Meanwhile the global credit crisis is washing ashore in Beirut. According to Reuters news agency:

Lebanese real estate developer Solidere said on Thursday that a fall in its share price was temporary, and maintained its 2008 profit outlook, which should remain at the 2007 level of about $130 million.

"The value of the assets of the company is definitely not reflected in this price," Mounir Douaidy, Solidere's general manager and Chief Financial Officer, told Reuters on the sidelines of a business conference in Beirut.

"I don't see the drops in the price really lasting for a long period."

Douaidy said profits for this year should, as forecast, remain near 2007 levels of $130 million.

Shares in Lebanon's largest developer hit a year-low on Thursday.

The A share fell 7.12 percent to $16.95 on the Beirut bourse and its B share shed 8.44 percent to end at $16.80. The share price hit $40 in July.

Picture: Samer Mohdad, Solidaire , Beirut City Center, Lebanon, 1997/2008, Silver print on original mount.

Be regional, demand the impossible

Sami Moubayed notes the warming of relations between Syria and the west led by France and Britain:

The fact that Syria was willing to enter into indirect talks with Israel - under the auspices of a world-recognized honest broker like Turkey - was proof that the Syrians were not as bad as the world had thought since 2003.

The turning point came when French President Nicolas Sarkozy began engaging both Damascus and Hezbollah, to find constructive solutions to the presidential crisis in Lebanon, in 2007.

When the Doha agreement - which had Syria's fingerprints all over it - was hammered out in May, Sarkozy invited Assad to Paris in July. In September, he went to Damascus - signaling a clear break from the policies of his predecessor Jacques Chirac - and met with Assad to discuss the indirect talks between Syria and Israel, via Turkish mediation.

Based on the above, Miliband arrived in Damascus on November 17 for talks with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moualem and Assad. His visit, the first for a senior British official since 2001, signals a new start in Syrian-British relations.

Speaking on his arrival in Damascus on Monday, shortly before visiting the historical Umayyad Mosque in the heart of the Old City, Miliband said that Syria had an "essential role" to play in securing Middle East peace.

***

This regional approach is part of the US rethinking its strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wrote in Socialist Worker:

The US needs Iran's compliance, if not its direct cooperation, to wage its wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Iran shares a long and relatively quiet border with Afghanistan, and it enjoys some influence among sections of the Afghan insurgency.

The regional approach for the US would draw Iran into helping to pull the "moderate Taliban" away from the "hardliners" and into a compromise with the Afghan government.

Much of the chatter in the US media is that Iran and the US share a great deal in common. They both mistrust the Wahhabi Islamist ideology that underpins the Taliban and Al Qaida.

This is neat spin, but it hides another, more important problem. The Wahhabi Islamists have spread fear and death among Shia Muslims, but they cannot overrun Iran or annihilate its economy – only the US can do this. For Iran, the US remains a dangerous enemy camped on its borders.

Iran has emerged out of the US debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq greatly strengthened. So now the new US administration will have to balance its need for Iran's cooperation with unease over its drive to master nuclear technology.

Killers are homesick

Apparently Lebanese who collaborated with Israel are sick of living in the "only democracy in the Middle East":

Bshara Rizk awoke at dawn and headed home, making his way through mine-infested fields and climbing over a barbed wire fence that stood between him and his native Lebanon.

Bloodied but euphoric, he arrived in his hometown of Qlayaa, located just across the border from Israel, where he exclaimed to the local priest: "I'm back."

Rizk, 24, had been living in a northern Israeli town since 2000, when his father's mainly Christian militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), followed its Israeli allies as they withdrew back across the border, after a long and brutal occupation of south Lebanon.

For eight years, Rizk worked at a factory in Israel, but most SLA members never felt welcomed in Israel.

"I never felt complete there and I always wanted to go back to Lebanon," the burly Rizk said following his return home on a Thursday back in June.

His family was amongst hundreds who fled because of their links to the SLA which was trained, financed and armed by Israel during its decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon.

They were seen as traitors.

Islamists in the mist

The Financial Times is attempting to get a grip on the murky world of Islamists, Syria and Lebanon:

Syrian television last week broadcast what it said were the confessions of members of the Lebanon-based Fatah al-Islam faction, admitting responsibility for a bomb attack in Damascus in September that killed 17. The Lebanese authorities yesterday said they had arrested five of the militants on suspicion of involvement "in terrorist acts".

The controversy arises from televised claims by the militants that they had been financed by Lebanon's anti-Syrian Future movement. The movement, led by Saad Hariri, son of murdered former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, is Lebanon's main Sunni political party.

The Future movement has denied the allegation. Ahmad Fatfat, a former cabinet minister, called it "a fabrication by the Syrian security services that can only prove their own involvement with Fatah al-Islam".

Damascus has repeatedly accused Salafi groups of involvement in violence in Syria. President Bashar al-Assad has sent about 10,000 troops to the border in what Syria says is an attempt to contain them.

Apart from their apparently limited number, much of what is known about the Salafists is a matter of dispute. The movement is splintered and divides into openly anti- and pro-Syrian factions. Members vary in their ideological affiliation with al-Qaeda and have different financial backers with wildly diverging agendas.

The sharpest division seems to run between groups for whom anti-US and general anti-western motives trump local politics, and those for whom antiSyrian, anti-Shia, antiHizbollah and anti-Iranian sentiments dominate - to the extent that they co-operate with the US-backed mainstream Sunni Future movement.

Phoenicians

According to the AP news agency: Archaeologists say they have unearthed pottery up to 3,000 years old in southern Lebanon that ancient Phoenicians used to bury the remains of the dead after cremation.

Archaeologist Ali Badawi tells The Associated Press that a team of Lebanese and Spanish experts discovered more than 100 earthen jars at an excavation site in the southern port city of Tyre.

The pottery dates to between 700 and 900 B.C., when Phoenician traders flourished on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Badawi said Wednesday that such discoveries offer a rare window into Phoenician history and culture.

Originating from what is now Lebanon, the Phoenicians were early seafarers who spread their culture to other countries around the region.

Spies

Breaking news:

Lebanon's Daily Star has a scoop: It seems that the "two men arrested for running an Israeli spy ring in the Bekaa Valley are relatives of a suicide hijacker who piloted a plane in the September 11, 2001, attacks, a security source told The Daily Star on Sunday.

"The army said that the men had been arrested on Friday, but the source said that they were actually captured two weeks ago and the discovery of the arrests by the media prompted the army to announce their capture"

*** ***

Media Line reports:

Lebanese authorities announced over the weekend it had apprehended two Lebanese civilians, who were spying on behalf of Israel's foreign intelligence body, the Mossad.

The two were recently captured in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley and have reportedly confessed they were employed by the Mossad, the Lebanese daily Al-Safir reported.

The ringleader, A.G., was recruited in the 1980s, during his activities with a Palestinian organization in the Beqaa.

A.G. then recruited several other men, including his relative, Y.G., who was the second person captured last week.

The cell gathered information on Lebanese military bases, Syrian intelligence centers in Lebanon and Palestinian institutions in the Beqaa and Hizbullah headquarters, informed sources revealed to A-Safir.

During their investigation it was further revealed that the group also gathered information in security centers in Damascus and in Kafr Sousa, where Hizbullah's operations chief 'Imad Mughniyya was assassinated last February.

In 2006 the LAF's Intelligence Directorate revealed it had captured an Israeli network that had been operating in Lebanon for many years. Its leader, Mahmoud Rafi, admitted that the network was behind the assassination of Hizbullah and Palestinian officials. Rafi further admitted the group planted explosive charges in several locations in Lebanon.

According to Ynet :

The man arrested on suspicion of employing network of agents working with Israeli intelligence to map out sensitive locations in Lebanon, Syria—including Damascus neighborhood in which Hizbullah leader Mugniyah was killed:

Sources said the network has been operating for over 20 years, and was responsible for mapping out the Beqaa Valley, including Syrian military bases and Palestinian sites. Recently, a-Safir reported, the spies have been pursuing Hizbullah operatives and outposts.

The ring was said to have operated in Syria as well, where it is suspected to have mapped out areas in Damascus such as Kfar Sousa, the secure neighborhood in which Hizbullah leader Imad Mugniyah was killed in February by a car bomb.

Investigators are currently attempting to link the espionage ring to Mugniyah's murder, as well as to divine its function in the transfer of information to Israel, the report said.

Anger in Syria

The BBC reports:

Thousands of people have held a peaceful demonstration in Damascus against an alleged US raid on a village that Syria says killed eight people.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Damascus, waving flags and carrying banners reading "No to American terrorism" and "America the sponsor of destruction and wars".

The protesters, including many civil servants and students, also waved pictures of the Syrian president, as they converged on the central Youssef al-Azmi square.

Syria said a US school would close temporarily and warned US citizens to avoid the area.

Five of those killed in the raid on Sunday were from the same family, and the BBC's Paul Wood spoke to the woman who lost her husband and four sons at the scene of the raid.

She was being treated in a Syrian hospital for injuries she said she received during the attack.

"I went outside to get my son and the Americans shot me," she said. "I was screaming in terror."

She said all the men were working on the house that was in the compound where the Americans landed, and denied any link between them and al-Qaeda.

Stability, apparently

A curious piece in The New York Times commends Lebanon's financial sector. Curious because of the great secrecy at a the heart of our banks means we don't actually know what they have in vaults. Of course it could just be that they are awash with billions of dollars looted from Iraq.

For those with time have a look at A Political Economy of Lebanon.

Here's the NYT piece:

This small country, chronically battered by war, turns out to have a banking sector that has so far been a beacon of stability and growth, The New York Times’s Robert F. Worth writes. Its banks are posting record profits, aided by conservative central bank policies, skillful management and money from Lebanese expatriates.

Lebanon’s very instability — its 15-year civil war and frequent political crises — appears to have bred the banking sector’s fiscal prudence, analysts say.

Three years ago the central bank here barred investments in derivatives and other structured financial products, giving banks virtual immunity to the widening financial contagion. The banks here have done little borrowing on international markets. Deposits account for about 83 percent of their assets, making them among the most liquid in the world.

“The banks here are used to turmoil,” Nassib Ghobril, the head of economic research and analysis for Byblos Bank, the country’s third largest, told The Times. “Since the end of the civil war in 1990, there has been no loss of deposits, and there’s great confidence in the sector.”

As of August, the money flowing into deposits grew 16 percent over 2007 — itself a record year. Lebanon had no working government for most of that period, and at times seemed to be on the verge of civil war.

Those inflows appear to be rising further. The central bank released statistics showing that it increased its foreign assets by $572 million in the first two weeks of October, possibly a sign that foreign deposits are growing.

Lebanon has also attracted the hedge fund industry, which has until now focused more on Persian Gulf markets. “We consider the well-capitalized Lebanese banks as safe as the safer banks in the gulf,” Florence Eid, the regional managing director for Passport Capital, a hedge fund based in San Francisco, told The Times.

An added asset is Lebanon’s often wealthy expatriates. About 4 million Lebanese live in the country, but an estimated 12 million live abroad, and many send money home and invest in real estate. The total of such remittances is expected to top last year’s, $5.5 billion, one of the world’s highest per capita rates.

Partly for that reason, banks here have grown so large that they dwarf the national economy. Lebanese bank assets are about $100 billion, in a country with a $25 billion gross domestic product, said Marwan Barakat, in charge of research at Bank Audi, the country’s largest lender.

This growth has allowed the banks to expand internationally. Bank Audi, for example, now has branches in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Qatar and Sudan.

The continued growth here is probably also related to some modest good news in politics. In May, after 18 months of deadlock, Lebanon’s warring factions agreed to a compromise. So far, the deal seems to be holding. But the banks are also doing their part, holding much of Lebanon’s $45.4 billion public debt.

“In this crisis, governments in the US, Europe and elsewhere have been stepping in to rescue their banking sectors,” Mr. Ghobril told The Times. “Whereas in Lebanon the sector is so large it has been supporting the state for years.”

Why attack Syria?

The US military attack on the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal I believe exposes growing divisions among the “coalition of the willing” behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The timing and target of the raid raise many questions.

The Syrian regime, which is dominated by the Alawite branch of Islam, has been reeling recently after a series of bomb attacks widely blamed on Al Qaida and other Sunni Islamist groups.

If Abu Ghadiyah, the main US target, was an Al Qaida leader, as the US claims, then the Syrian regime would have had no scruples in arresting him. The US intelligence services acknowledge that for several years Syria has cracked down on the so called “foreign fighters” passing through its territory into Iraq.

Some commentators say that Syria’s recent moves to ease tensions in the region are the main motivation for the US attack. The Syrian regime has been involved in peace talks with Israel and has formally recognised Lebanese independence.

The US is also worried that a resurgent Russia is preparing to rebuild its ties with Syria. Last month Russia reopened a Syrian port used as a Mediterranean base for warships. The port was closed down following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Embarassingly for the British government, the US raid came as foreign secretary David Miliband was due to hold a joint press conference with his Syrian counterpart. Miliband “withdrew” from the conference as news of the attack came through.

The fact that the US did not warn its ally of the raid has left the British foreign secretary deeply compromised.


The result, writes Sami Moubayed is that:

"One theory says that the entire ordeal was part of the internal US politics in the final lap of the presidential campaign, aimed at boosting the chances of Republican Senator John McCain by giving him more reason to pursue Bush's "war on terror" - this time with Syria.

"Had the Americans struck at a terrorist stronghold, the Bush team would have been the first to brag about it on all available media. The fact that the traditional US chorus remained silent seems proof that the Americans were not too proud of what they did, and that perhaps human error had come into play."

Another possibility is that this raid could be part of a recognition that, as the US withdraws from the western part of Iraq, the resistance will once again take over.

Whatever the truth, by attacking a Syrian border town the US is sending a message that it is prepared to spread the “war on terror” over borders.

This is a dangerous turn of events.

Saudi Games

The Saudi regime is using its cash in attempt to build a rival to Hizbollah, writes Sami Moubayed in Asia Times:

The Saudis are reportedly funding a rival wing of Hezbollah itself, modeled around Sheikh Subhi Tufayli, one of the party's original founders who has been sitting in the dark since the 1990s.

Tufayli started out as a firm supporter of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, having studied Islam in Najaf (Iraq) during Khomeini's long exile in the holy Iraqi city, before the Islamic revolution of 1979. He returned to Lebanon and helped co-found Hezbollah - with Iranian support - during the Israeli invasion of 1982.

Under Tufayli's leadership, Hezbollah managed to drive Amal from Beirut during the height of the Lebanese civil war in the late 1980s. Under his command rose the young Nasrallah in 1989, leading a commando force against Amal in Iqlim al-Tuffah, and becoming a member of the central command of Hezbollah at the young age of 29.

A hardliner, Tufayli once said that his supporters did not dream of eradicating Israel in the near future, but plans to lead a battle that will last "for centuries". More recently, he has distanced himself from Iran for its firm support for Nasrallah, a man whom he respects but envies tremendously. He can't challenge him, beat him, or replace him as head of Hezbollah or the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

In 2000, when Nasrallah liberated south Lebanon against Israel, Tufayli was believed to be politically finished, since Hezbollah was at the apex of its career and no Shi'ite with a right mind could challenge the charisma or popularity of Nasrallah.

But on several occasions he came out and spoke against Nasrallah, objecting to the latter's alliance with Iran and claiming that he broke with Hezbollah because of the overt Iranian agenda of its secretary general. Earlier, in his final act of defiance, Tufayli clashed with the Lebanese state when his followers tried to take over a party-run religious school in Baalbak.

The Lebanese government of Siniora has tried in vain to get rid of Hezbollah, but was unable to do so due to the party's power base and the repeated victories it scored against Israel since 2000. The UN could not disarm Hezbollah, nor could the United States, or Israel in its failed 2006 war on Lebanon.

Now, all parties are trying to break Nasrallah's kingdom from within, through splinter Shi'ite groups loyal to people like Tufayli and through the money of dissident Syrians. Any person who has seen how popular Nasrallah was in Lebanon in 2000 or 2006 realizes how foolish it would be to try and challenge him by resurrecting figures like Subhi Tufayli.

Two nations, one people

The carve up of Bilad al-Sham is now formalised in the "mutual recognition" of Lebanon and Syria.

According to the BBC, "A signing ceremony has been held in Damascus establishing diplomatic relations for the first time between Syria and Lebanon. A joint statement said Syria and Lebanon would respect each other's sovereignty and independence."

This division was put in place by the French Mandate in the early 1920s and rejected by the overwhelming majority of people both sides of the border.

But after democracy was so brutaly crushed in Syria the idea of beng ruled by the cabal of Baathists in Damascus killed any chance of unity.

The death knell, I guess, was the invasion by Syrian troops in 1976 which crush the secular democratic revolution in Lebanon. It was downhill from there.

On a personal note: my grandma, who has just turned 100, still keeps her education certificate from the "Syrian Girls College" hidden in her suitcase. It always jarred when members of my family put down "Syrians", and they usually got angry when I pointed out that technically both grandfather and grandmother were born in Syrian (before 1922). There's even a boat ticket to New York (from the 1910s) were our address is given as Berbara, Syria.

Hopefully the two countries will become one again... but only under a democratic socialist system.

I will wait patiently.

Interview with Tony Cliff—1996

Saudi backed terror?

Sami Moubayed writes in Asia Times:

While Saudi Arabia's official policy remained critical of Syria, a certain branch in the Saudi royal family still harbored ambitions to topple the Syrian government altogether and replace it with pro-Saudi opposition figures like former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam.

Tension was further elevated when terror struck in the heart of Damascus on September 27. A suicide bomber loaded with 200 kilograms of explosives killed 17 Syrians and injured between 15 to 40 civilians. Saudi Arabia was the only country in the Arab world that refused to condemn the attack, although it was harshly criticized by France, Russia and even the US.

Although it became clear to everybody - France being first on the list - that the Saudis were not getting the upper hand in Beirut politics, Lebanon remained closely allied to Riyadh, due to the personal and financial bond between Saad Hariri, the parliamentary majority leader, and the House of Saud.

One of the first to realize that the Syrians are overpowering the Saudis in Lebanon was Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a strongman of the March 14 Coalition. He realized that the US-imposed isolation of Syria has crumbled, after Bashar Al Assad's visit to Paris in July 2008.

More recently, what worried both the Saudis and Jumblatt was the semi-rapprochement that started developing between Syria and the US. Last month, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, at her request, and discussed a variety of issues related to the Middle East.

The Syrians believe, although they have not said it bluntly, that the Saudis are furious at Syria's repeated diplomatic successes. Eager for vengeance, they are now financing Islamic fundamentalism in Lebanon to strike at both Hezbollah and Syria and have not yet digested the outcomes of May 2008.

Assad said that the sectarian violence taking place in northern Lebanon was dangerous to Syria. Many believe that the suicide bomber who detonated a bomb in Damascus was a product of a fanatical group trained and created in Lebanon. That might explain why the Syrians amassed thousands of troops on their border with Lebanon, to prevent the influx of jihadi fighters to Syria.

If Saudi Arabia was not guilty of the September 27 attack, it certainly looked and acted guilty by refusing to say anything about it.

Meanwhile, the Saudis, frantic to save their positions in Lebanon, had already started pumping money to build a Sunni armed movement to confront Hezbollah if matters escalated once again.

"Old election law"

The BBC reports:

The Lebanese parliament has approved a new election law as part of a reconciliation process begun in May.

The new law, which alters the boundaries of voting districts, will be used as the basis for parliamentary elections next year.

It is an amended version of a 1960 law under which voting is held in smaller districts known as cazas.

The new law also calls for Lebanese elections to be held on one day, rather than over several days.

Several proposed reforms were rejected, including a lowering of the voting age to 18 from 21, quotas for women in parliament, and allowing Lebanese citizens living abroad to vote.

Forest fires

The UN news agency warns:

Devastating fires caused by climate change are threatening forests in Lebanon, in turn accelerating the pace of global warming.

"We are witnessing a rise in temperature which leads to the dryness of forest soil and pushes it towards desertification," Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine, director-general of the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation (AFDC), a local NGO, told IRIN from Beirut

The country is witnessing forest fires earlier than usual. "We noticed that fires are starting in April, three months earlier than the usual season, which commences in June or July.

With the ongoing increase in temperature, the land is losing much of its humidity and trees are becoming drier. This causes severe fires that are difficult to suppress," she added.

Fakhreddine said on average, about 1,500 hectares of woodland were affected by fires annually, but in 2007 more than 4,000 hectares of forests were ravaged in the worst fires to hit Lebanon for decades. "In one day we lost three times what we planted in 17 years."

According to AFDC, forests covered 35 percent of the country in 1965 - against 13 percent in 2007. "If we witness fires like the ones that erupted last year, Lebanon will lose its forests completely in 15 to 20 years," Fakhreddine warned.