Assad speech sparks angry reaction in Lebanon

By Kim Ghattas
November 16, 2005 
Financial Times
Original Source: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1a4cf454-5321-11da-8d05-0000779e2340.html

Lebanese newspapers yesterday reacted strongly to Thursday's speech by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, which harshly criticised Lebanon's government and parliament.
Almost all the Lebanese newspapers reprinted the speech in full and published lengthy commentaries.
The liberal anti-Syrian newspaper An-Nahar wrote that Mr Assad's address was a declaration of war against Lebanon but that the Lebanese people would continue their battle for independence. L'Orient-Le Jour, the French-language paper, wrote that Mr Assad was seeking to provoke strife.
During the speech at Damascus University on Thursday, Mr Assad claimed that Lebanon had become a passageway, a factory and a financier of conspiracies against Syria, in effect accusing Beirut of siding with the west against it.
He accused Lebanese politicians of being merchants exploiting the blood of the assassinated politicians to make political gains.
He had harsh words for Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, calling him a slave of slaves. This was a reference to Mr Siniora's ties to Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated politician Rafiq Hariri, and to the Hariri family's relations with leaders such as Jacques Chirac, the French president, and the Saudi royal family.
Relations between Syria and Lebanon have been tense since the murder in February of Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister. The killing was blamed on Syria, and while it maintained its innocence, Damascus ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April under international pressure.
Last month, a UN probe determined that there was converging evidence pointing to the involvement of Syrian and Lebanese officials in the plot.
Detlev Mehlis, the chief UN investigator, is seeking to interview several Syrian officials including Assef Shawkat, Mr Assad's brother-in-law and head of military intelligence.
Five pro-Syrian ministers, including a representative of the Hizbollah guerrilla movement, walked out of a cabinet session on Thursday after Lebanon's reaction to the speech was added to the agenda.
In spite of the walk-out, Ghazi Aridi, the information minister, said after the weekly cabinet session: The Lebanese cabinet expresses its rejection and astonishment of the Syrian president's speech and attack on the Lebanese government and parliament. We renew our confidence in Prime Minister Siniora. Trad Hamadeh, one of the five ministers who walked out, said they were not leaving the government but needed time before reacting to the speech.
During a speech yesterday, Naim Qassem, second-in-command of the Hizbollah faction, sought to reassure the Syrian leader that Lebanon would never be a plotting ground against Syria.
* United Nations investigators met President Emile Lahoud yesterday as part of the inquiry into the hideous Hariri assassination, the presidential palace said, Reuters reports.
It had been reported that one of the suspects telephoned Mr Lahoud shortly before the killing.