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Pro-Syrian Lebanese Parties Voice Support for Arrests
BEIRUT, Aug 14 (IslamOnline & News agencies) - Pro-Syrian political parties in Lebanon voiced their support Tuesday for last week's army roundup of anti-Damascus elements accused of threatening Lebanese-Syrian relations, news agencies reported.
A joint statement to the press said the parties "welcomed the measures taken by the Lebanese army, which has stopped these bands of traitors and plotters, who are threatening civil order and want to bring the country to a climate of civil war."
The statement was signed by the Lebanese branch of the Baath party, which governs Syria, the Hezbollah and Amal Islamic groups, and the Syrian National Social Party.
Separately, a group of unidentified pro-Syrian organizations published a statement welcoming the "measures taken by the Lebanese army to block the way to those plotters who have attacked the chief of state [President Emile Lahoud], Lebanese-Syrian relations and Syria, which supports Lebanon and its army," Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
More than 200 anti-Syrian Christians were seized in an army crackdown against the popular movement, in alleged attempts to purge the country of thousands of Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon since the nation's 1975-1990 civil war.
Those arrested have long resented Damascus' role as the powerbroker within Lebanon's political scene.
But the arrests have been severely criticized by numerous members of government.
On Monday, Lebanon's parliament passed an amendment awarding powers to the general prosecutor to extend police custody over detainees to four days, an endorsement of the military's dragnet operation.
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik el-Hariri said the move would ward off a political "crisis," despite the military's reported failure to consult with any section of the elected government on its get-tough policy before initiating its crackdown.
"Nobody wants to be prime minister in these conditions. The amendment proposed today is not put forward for judicial reasons but for political reasons," he said Monday.
"We don't approve of it but we are going to vote in favor of it to avert a political crisis," Hariri said.
The motion was passed by a majority of 71 deputies in the 128-seat parliament.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's parliamentary group and other deputies walked out of the session in protest. According to some members of the Beirut bar association who requested anonymity, the amendment was allegedly passed to cover up the recent round of arrests, AFP reported.
Jumblatt has spoken out vehemently against the mass jailings, comparing the military's conduct to the brutal behavior of militias during the civil war.
According to the Lebanese Daily Star online, Jumblatt called Monday for "an extensive inquiry" into the recent arrests of anti-Syrian protesters, and warned against regressing to the dark days of civil war.
Jumblatt also criticized army intelligence, describing its crackdown on hardline Christian factions as "worse than that during the days of the late President Fouad Chehab."
The MP also demanded, "…answers, not to me personally, but to future generations, about the way students were beaten up."
He said that Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir's recent tour of the Chouf "was not a bilateral deal," and that Lahoud "must have heard some whispers during [Sfeir's] visit to Deir al-Qamar … which led to the … arrests," the Daily Star online reported.
He recalled that Lahoud had started a dialogue with "Sfeir, then us, then with the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, and later with the Democratic Forum. Then the crackdown started …[and] Premier Rafik Hariri was in Pakistan and did not know what was going on. Neither did Defense Minister Khalil Hrawi. Until Interior Minister Elias Murr came up with this statement containing some kind of threat and reminding us of the bad days of the civil war and giving us lessons in democracy."
He also urged all concerned not to open the civil war files; otherwise no one would escape the dragnet, of whom Jumblatt could himself be caught up in.
"We don't want to go back to the role of the Deuxieme Bureau [army intelligence], Kahaleh and the massacre of 1969. [Walid's father] Kamal Jumblatt was interior minister. Should the acts during the Chehab period be repeated?"
Speaking on the recent anti-Syrian demonstrations, Jumblatt said, "I don't say that the anti-Syrian slogans that were shouted … were innocent. But they could have been [shouted by] members of army intelligence."
Meanwhile, the Lebanese parliament did not pass any motion commenting on the dozen people still being held in custody, including the coordinator of the Free National Current, Nadim Lteif, and Tufiq Hindi, a political advisor for the dissolved Lebanese Forces (LF) militia.
Hindi has been accused of conspiring with an Israeli official to expel Syrian troops from the country. The military aired footage of his alleged confession on national television.
General prosecutor Adnan Addum told reporters that the defense ministry was holding Hindi, and added that Lteif's case had been forwarded to a civil court.
Lteif is facing charges "of threatening ties with a brother country" and "belonging to an unauthorized association," Addum said.
Lteif's organization, the Free National Current, consists of the followers of exiled former Prime Minister General Michel Aoun, AFP reported.
Aoun, a previous collaborator with Israel during its occupation of South Lebanon, had declared a "war of liberation against the Syrian occupier" in 1989 before a Syrian-led military offensive forced him to flee to France a year later.
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