Hariri: Any Regional War Direct Result of International Community Inaction

Prime Minister Saad Hariri said any future war in the region would be the direct result of international community inaction and failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"War in the region has never been due to a decision taken by Lebanon. Any war is a direct result of inaction on the part of the international community and the failure to move seriously on the peace process," Hariri told the German Press Agency dpa in an exclusive interview.
"All wars with Israel, in which Lebanon has been the victim of, have been launched by Israel, not by us, and Lebanon is the one who paid a very high price, in human lives, displaced people and destroyed infrastructure," Hariri said.
"The problem is that we live in a volatile region. It all boils down to what got us to be in this situation of regional instability, and the answer to that is failure to do anything on the peace process," he told dpa.
Asked about Israeli threats to hold the Lebanese government responsible for any attack by Hizbullah on Israel, the premier said: "This is not the first time that Hizbullah has been part of the government. This goes to show how the Israelis are always looking for pretexts.
The Shiite party is represented in parliament as a result of democratic elections, he said.
Hariri said he will make a three day visit to Germany on Sunday to "discuss the regional situation and how to protect Lebanon from regional conflicts."
He told his interviewer that talks in Berlin will tackle ways to boost cooperation with Germany which contributes to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

The prime minister also warned of growing political extremism given the failure of the peace process.

"Today fighting extremism is not the responsibility of one country alone. It is the responsibility of the whole world. In our region, for instance, extremists are unfortunately gaining audience, at the expense of moderates," he said.

On relations with Syria, Hariri told dpa that ties "are on the right track."

"We are approaching them in a very positive attitude, and we are met with a very positive attitude by Damascus. We are two neighbors, united by Arab identity," he said.

Hariri said he will be visiting Damascus again "in the coming weeks for more in-depth discussions on all these issues."

Turning to the issue of the international tribunal that would try his father’s suspected assassins, Hariri said: "I have complete faith in the Tribunal. Whatever the results from it, I will accept."

"This has always been my position, and it will remain the same," he added.

Indian minister: Maoists are a greater threat than Islamic terrorists

Posted By STR/AFP/Getty Images

The Indian government is preparing to deploy thousands of soldiers to defeat the country’s growing Naxalite Maoist insurgency. Home minister P Chidambaram’s description of the threat posed by the Naxalites was striking:

The Home Minister told a media conclave in Delhi that the Maoists and Islamic militants represented the two biggest threats to India’s national security, but the former was the more serious.

“Jihadi terrorism can be countered, usually successfully, if you are able to share information and act in real time,” he said. “But Maoism is an even graver threat.”

The numbers back up Chidambaram’s claim:

India has suffered only one attack by suspected Islamist militants – a bombing in the western city of Poona which killed 12 people last month – since the devastating one on Mumbai in November 2008.

By comparison, Maoist violence claimed 908 lives in India in 2009, the highest since 1971, according to the Home Ministry.

Chidambaram pledged that the Maoist threat would be eliminated in two to three years, which seems ambitious given that they’re operating in 200 of India’s 626 districts. As a internal rather than transnational threat, the Naxalites don’t get much attention in the West. But it stikes me that their potential to damage the credibility of India’s democratic government or provoke it into overreaction is probably a serious cause for concern.

Russia to build up to 16 nuclear reactors in India

By Gleb Bryanski
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Russia will build up to 16 nuclear reactors for power stations in India, Russia’s deputy premier said on Friday during a visit to India with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to reaffirm decades-old ties.

Russia is competing with French and American firms for lucrative contracts to build nuclear power plants for energy-hungry India because Asia’s third-largest economy needs to boost its supply to help sustain rapid economic growth.

“The agreement sees construction of up to sixteen nuclear reactors in three locations,” Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters.

Putin pledged on Friday to boost banking and technology cooperation with India, seeking to bolster ties with a Cold War ally that has been shifting focus towards the United States.

Russia wants to boost trade with India to $20 billion (13 billion pounds) by 2015 from the current $8 billion. Together with China and Brazil, Russia and India make up the so-called BRIC group of major emerging economies, whose global influence is rising.

The two nations also seek a greater role in stabilising the region because both share security interests emanating from Islamist militant violence and the war in Afghanistan.

“India is our strategic partner … which is an evidence that our geopolitical interests almost fully coincide,” Putin told a conference with businessmen in the Indian capital New Delhi.

Setting the tone for his one-day visit mainly aimed at keeping one of the world’s biggest arms importers interested in Russian weapons, Putin offered state financial aid for the Indian telecoms unit of Russian conglomerate Sistema.

Sistema, controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov, is looking to deepen its investment in Sistema Shyam TeleServices, a joint venture with India’s Shyam group.

“We are ready to contribute funds for your joint activity,” Putin said in response to a question by a Shyam group official.

Yevtushenkov later said the Russian government would become a shareholder in Shyam.

Putin also vowed to remove hurdles in the banking sector that he said were hampering mutual trade, and signalled that the government was ready to encourage joint ventures and acquisitions in the sector.

U.S. INFLUENCE
India struck a landmark civilian nuclear deal with the United States in 2008, ending the isolation it had experienced since an atomic test in 1974 and giving it access to U.S. technology and fuel, while also opening up the global nuclear market to India.

As India begins to lean more on the United States, Moscow fears losing not only influence over New Delhi but the bulk of its $100 billion defence market as well.

Putin’s visit is likely to produce deals worth more than $10 billion mainly in defence contracts, nuclear reactors and trade.

Ivanov also said Russia would deliver the refurbished Gorshkov aircraft carrier to India by the end of 2012, an issue which has troubled relations between the two powers.

Russia and India signed a contract worth $1.5 billion on Friday for Moscow to supply 29 MiG 29 K fighters, the CEO of Russian plane maker Sukhoi, Mikhail Pogosyan, said.

Pogosyan also said he expected a joint venture with the state-run Indian company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to manufacture around 200 fifth-generation fighter jets.

Fifth-generation jets, such as the U.S. F-22 Raptor stealth fighters which first flew in 1997, are invisible to radar and boast “intelligent” on-board flight and arms control systems and supersonic cruising speeds.

Putin sought to assure Indian businessmen that Russian nuclear reactors were safe. Russia has almost completed equipment delivery for two reactors at Kudankulam nuclear power station and is in talks to build two more reactors.

“Our reactors can sustain a crash of a medium-range passenger plane,” Putin said, seeking to demonstrate that Russian plants could withstand even September11, 2001-style attacks.

The two countries also agreed to strengthen cooperation in hydrocarbons through greater collaboration between oil and gas companies, but did not announce any firm energy deals.

(Editing by Matthias Williams and Paul Tait)

US ‘pleased’ with Indian move to proceed with N-liability bill

The Obama Administration has said it is “pleased” with the Indian government’s decision to go ahead with a bill on nuclear liability in Parliament, describing it as a key move in implementation of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

“We were very gratified to learn … (about) India’s intention to introduce this bill in the current session of the Indian Parliament,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, told the popular Japanese newspaper ‘Asahi Shimbun’ in an interview.

The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010, which addresses the issue of liability of private operators of nuclear plants, is expected to be introduced in Lok Sabha on Monday. It pegs the maximum amount of liability in case of each nuclear accident at Rs 300 crore to be paid by the operator of the nuclear plant.

“…we are pleased with (the decision to introduce the bill in Parliament) that and we’ll be following the progress of that legislation very closely. And, the ultimate goal of ours is, of course, to allow the export of nuclear reactors to India. As you know, the Indians have set aside two nuclear reactor park sites, in the states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh,” he said.

Up to eight reactors could be located in each of those parks that represent significant export of American technology and also a source of jobs for the US to help its economic recovery, he said.  [It looks like the US screwed itself over this potential deal by cozying-up to Pakistan.    SEE: Russia to build up to 16 nuclear reactors in India]

India to Limit Nuclear Liability to Accomodate US Corporations

Nuclear Liability Bill to be introduced on Monday

Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI: The government intends to introduce in the Lok Sabha on Monday the Nuclear Liability Bill to cap liability in the event of a nuclear accident.

Although India is not yet a signatory to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s model law on the subject, the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, the Bill does flow from that, although it is different in some respects.

Official sources indicated that ideally Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would have liked the Lok Sabha to take the Bill up for consideration and pass it in this session itself, but it was unlikely.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Left parties and others such as the Samajwadi Party, have already started making noises about the Bill, saying it is being brought to please the Americans. There is no way they would agree to have this taken up without the Bill being whetted by the related standing committee.

Obstacle seen

In this instance, the Bill would go to the committee related to the Energy Ministry, chaired by SP leader Mulayam Singh. Given the anger in the SP over the Women’s Reservation Bill, it is not likely that the government will be able to get the Bill speeded up through the standing committee.

Official sources tried to argue that although the Bill seeks to cap, and thus limit the liability for the operator of a nuclear plant, be it in the public or private sector, the compensation due in the event of an accident, will in fact be determined by a commission for nuclear liability that would be set up. The difference, it was said, would be the liability of the government.

Private companies in the United States are not willing to sell any nuclear equipment without such a law in place, but the French and the Russians had no such problem.

ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

more about “U.S. National Biometric ID Cards Comi…“, posted with vodpod

ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

By LAURA MECKLER

Customs and Border Protection agent Jesus Gomez checks a passport at the vehicle crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in California.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill are proposing a new national biometric ID card that would be required of all U.S. workers. WSJ’s Laura Meckler explains the proposal and the objections from privacy advocates.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”

Revolving Door: Immigration Legislation

View Interactive

See attempts at reform and statistics on immigrants removed from the U.S. over the past six decades.

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”

Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. “We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

Last year, White House aides said they expected to push immigration legislation in 2010. But with health care and unemployment dominating his attention, the president has given little indication the issue is a priority.

Rather, Mr. Obama has said he wanted to see bipartisan support in Congress first. So far, Mr. Graham is the only Republican to voice interest publicly, and he wants at least one other GOP co-sponsor to launch the effort.

An immigration overhaul has long proven a complicated political task. The Latino community is pressing for action and will be angry if it is put off again. But many Americans oppose any measure that resembles amnesty for people who came here illegally.

Under the legislation envisioned by Messrs. Graham and Schumer, the estimated 10.8 million people living illegally in the U.S. would be offered a path to citizenship, though they would have to register, pay taxes, pay a fine and wait in line. A guest-worker program would let a set number of new foreigners come to the U.S. legally to work.

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.

Mr. Schumer first suggested a biometric-based employer-verification system last summer. Since then, the idea has gained currency and is now a centerpiece of the legislation being developed, aides said.

A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.

The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t have a position on the proposal, but it is concerned that employers would find it expensive and complicated to properly check the biometrics.

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

—Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.

Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com

A passage to world power

• Randeep Ramesh
• guardian.co.uk

The reality of India I saw was often grim. Yet the country still confounds those who write it off

In my six years there, it was hard not to be infected by the hubris of India – a nation that feels part of history, an essential actor on the global stage. Yet even as I admired a country that had thrived as a democracy despite unbounded poverty, mass illiteracy and entrenched social divides, experiencing India as a reporter was a string of enervating and dispiriting episodes.

Whether I was visiting a rural police station where half-naked men were hung from the ceiling during an interrogation, or talking to the parents of a baby bulldozed to death in a slum clearance, the romance of India’s idealism was undone by its awful daily reality. The venality, mediocrity and indiscipline of its ruling class would be comical but for the fact that politicians appeared incapable of doing anything for the 836 million people who live on 25p a day.

The selling of public office for private gain was so bad that the only way to make poverty history in India would be to make every person a politician. Last year the wealth of local representatives in the northern state of Haryana rose at an astonishing rate of £10,000 a month. Their constituents were lucky if their income increased by a few pounds.

The burden of democracy in India, to borrow from Yeats, the Irish poet influenced by mystical Hindu thought, was that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”. Yet the country continues to confound those who write it off.

I saw India redeemed repeatedly by three quirks of history: a written liberal constitution, religions rendered ethical, and a talent for sabotage. Take the last first. India won independence not through war or revolution but through non-co-operation, protest and the quiet subversion of the economy. Civil society in India has acquired an unrivalled mastery of such skills, and campaigners have been quicker than politicians to realise that democracy will not prevail unless its proponents show success at governing. Consequently, it was activists who shamed the government last year into enacting a law to make children’s education compulsory.

India’s constitution, the longest in the world, has become a moral compass for justice in a society where violence had been the best measure of one’s power and standing. When homosexual sex was legalised by Delhi’s high court last summer, the judges said the old law criminalising the gay community was in violation of the constitution. By appealing to the highest sense of being Indian, the bench ended years of homophobia.

To claim faith has enabled Indians to come together might seem far-fetched. British India was rent asunder by religion, and one of my first reporting tasks was to visit Muslim victims of state-sponsored pogroms. Yet such violence appeared more political than theological. Indeed, during my time in India it was Europe that appeared unable to embrace religious diversity. While I awoke each day to the sound of the muezzin, the Swiss voted to outlaw the construction of minarets. France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to ban the burka; Britain’s Jack Straw asks women to remove veils in meetings and the Turks wait, still, to join the EU. Europe’s liberalism looked like a straitjacket of unspoken Christian values.

India’s philosophy emphasised not what you believed but how you behaved. Lead a compassionate, religious life and the state would leave you alone. This thinking meant Indian streets are shared by people who look, dress and pray differently – making them a celebration of the nation’s diversity.

Diverse, yes: but it’s an open question whether the society being created by these forces is a fair one. India is perhaps the most unequal country on the planet, with a tiny elite engorged on the best education, biggest landholdings and largest incomes. Those born on the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy suffer a legacy of caste bigotry, rural servitude and class discrimination.

Politics in India is increasingly becoming a debate about the haves and have-nots, and this is given violent expression by a rise in bloody Maoist guerrilla terror. Delhi’s stance in global talks is being reduced to the impact on poverty.

Whether the matter is climate change, trade talks or nuclear weapons, India has forced wealthier nations to acknowledge that international relations are about power and morals. It negotiates with a hand yet to be dealt: in a few decades it will be the world’s third largest economy.

Coming back to London has meant returning to a country that lives in the shadow of its former colony. Britain may see itself as a major power, sending troops to pacify Islamist insurgents and spreading good governance globally. These delusions will leave us morbidly disappointed. Unlike Indians, we are not on the cusp of a stirring transformation. Overspent and overstretched, we perch instead on the crest of a falling wave.

March 20 anti-war actions

ALL OUT! March 20 anti-war actions

Published Mar 11, 2010 9:59 PM

U.S. imperialism’s crimes against the Iraqi people are so great that no amount of lying in the corporate media can wipe them out. That doesn’t stop these manufacturers of instant misinformation from trying. They have hypocritically presented a patently fraudulent election, held under an occupying power and administered by a puppet regime, as a sterling example of democracy and courage.

There are still nearly 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq seven years after the illegal aggression, plus an equal number of “contractors” — mercenaries. The U.S. occupation has left more than 1 million dead and created 5 million refugees. It has exacerbated ethnic and religious differences leading to the brink of a partition of the country. Its puppet regime has been pressured to pass laws turning over Iraqi natural wealth to imperialist concerns, thus sowing the seeds of a potential civil war.

But the corporate media, by apparent prior agreement, writes glowingly of Iraqis dipping their fingers in ink as if the election were a proof of Iraqi sovereignty.

All the more reason why anyone who opposed this war at the beginning, and the millions more who want it over with now, should head to the protest in Washington or other regional centers on March 20 to make their voices as strong and dramatic as they can.

Just as in the days of war criminal George W. Bush, a Republican, U.S. wars and occupations continue in Iraq under the Democratic Party administration, even expanding in Afghanistan and stretching into Pakistan. The Pentagon is also intervening in Somalia and Yemen and continually threatening Iran, with or without a first strike by the Israeli military. Not to speak of other interventions threatened in the Caribbean, South America and the Pacific.

In this period, the workers in the United States have been hit with the worst capitalist recession since the 1930s — one in which a short-lived recovery for the stock market has brought no recovery to the job market, despite colossal bailouts to the banks and brokerage houses by the Obama administration. This crisis at home has focused attention here on the desperate economic questions facing the working class and oppressed peoples.

But there is no way to separate the need to fight imperialist war from the need to struggle on basic economic issues. The two struggles must be carried on simultaneously and intertwined.

The March 20 demonstrations, in Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco, called by the Answer Coalition to mark the seventh anniversary of the criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq, raise the slogans: U.S. Out of Afghanistan and Iraq; Free Palestine; Reparations for Haiti; and Money for Health Care, Jobs and Education. Many other anti-imperialist, anti-war, community and progressive organizations have endorsed these actions, including the International Action Center and the Bail Out the People Movement.

Workers World has endorsed them, too, and calls again upon the working-class and progressive people to mobilize participation in them throughout the country.

Turkey supports Palestine as Arab world comatose, says Druze leader

Çağıl M. KASAPOĞLU

BEIRUT – Hürriyet Daily News

‘At the time, the Ottoman Empire was the ‘sick man of Europe,’ and nowadays it’s the Arab world that is the sick man,’ says Druze leader Jumblatt. Photo: Rayya HADDAD

A powerful Druze leader in Lebanon has underlined the increasing influence of Turkey in the Middle East as the Arab world has been undergoing turmoil over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Turkey is playing an important role in its region, Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, or PSP, said March 5 in an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

At his residence in the heart of Beirut, decorated with a mix of Oriental- and Western-style furniture, with Buddha statues alongside his everyday working desk, Jumblatt said that while half of the Arab world has been in a coma, Turkey has been supporting the Arab world’s main cause, which is, he said, the Palestinian cause.

“At one time, some Turks rightly or wrongly have accused Arabs of betraying them during World War I, but now, with the new policy of Turkey and also of Syria, we have to admit that Turkish-Arab resentment is over,” Jumblatt said when asked whether Turkey is distancing itself from the West through the recent rapprochement with its eastern neighbors.

Though he praised U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo last year, Jumblatt also said the June 4, 2009, address lacked practical implications, whereas Turkey, with its active involvement as a mediator, is the major determining factor for the Middle East peace talks.

Citing Turkey’s Ottoman roots to define today’s Arab world, the Druze leader said, “At the time, the Ottoman Empire was the ‘sick man of Europe,’ and nowadays it’s the Arab world that is the sick man.”

The Arab League gave the green light to Palestinians on March 3 to enter indirect talks with Israel; the motion, however, was tabled after Israel announced its plan to expand Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.

Supporting limited negotiations with the Israeli government is giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a clear-cut victory after all, Jumblatt said. “Netanyahu will now say, ‘I’ve been colonizing the West Bank, I’ve been attacking the holy places like Haram al-Khalil and nobody is there challenging me now,’” he said.

Praising initiatives

After his visit to Turkey in February, the Druze leader seemed impressed by the democratic initiatives started by the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP. As a neighboring country to the Arab world, Turkey is now the only successful experiment of democracy in the region, the only one that respects the rules of democracy, he said.

Nevertheless, Jumblatt said he believes that the same levels of democracy and development fail to apply for the rest of the Middle East. Referring to the latest report by the United Nations Development Programme on human development in Arab states for 2009, he reiterated that the Arab world has long suffered due to low literacy rates and fundamentalism, which he said is becoming “more depressing every year than before.”

Apart from diplomatic relations, Turkey’s growing economic ties in the region are also very much appreciated by the Druze leader, who is a successful businessman as well.

Turkey has recently lifted visa requirements for Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, leading to the creation of a visa-free Middle East for the country. The direct involvement of Turkey aimed not only to increase diplomatic relations but also to augment trade capacity amongst the Middle Eastern states.

The visa-free zone should be further developed for the benefit of each actor in the region, Jumblatt said, using the European Union as an example of how more embedded trade relations in the Middle East could work. Disputes in the EU ended with the creation of a common market in Europe, he said.

“When the Germans and French in the ’50s decided to build new relationships starting with the abolishment of the taxes and barriers on steel at that time… they stopped fighting after having the bloodshed of World War I and World War II,” Jumblatt said.

He added that the Arab world needs to develop economic ties, keeping the European common market in mind, in order to set up healthier and more peaceful relations in the Middle East.

In addition to regional developments, Jumblatt also stressed the growing trade capacity with Cyprus. In order to further strengthen economic development, he added, both Turkish and Greek Cypriots should create an “acceptable environment.”

He expressed his hope that this would not become as complicated as the Palestinian issue.

‘Lebanon must improve ties with Syria’

With his political maneuvering and ability to emerge on the winning side of Lebanon’s civil war and its aftermath, Jumblatt is seen by his critics as the country’s “political weathervane.”

Jumblatt, who heads the country’s Druze community, recently occupied headlines with his controversial decision to leave the pro-Western March 14 Alliance of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to ally himself with the opposition, the Hezbollah-led March 8 Alliance.

While Jumblatt’s critics say his alliance with the Hezbollah-led coalition has complicated already tense negotiations over the new Lebanese government, Jumblatt believes the close relations with Damascus on both political and economic issues must be maintained as stated in the 1989 Taif Accord.

The importance of such relations is even evidenced by the government, Jumblatt said, citing al-Hariri’s December meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

The two held “constructive” talks, ending five years of animosity between Syria and a broad political alliance led by al-Hariri that stemmed from the assassination of al-Hariri’s father, Rafiq al-Hariri, in a massive Beirut car-bombing in February 2005.

A United Nations inquiry in June said it had evidence that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services were linked to the killing yet Damascus has consistently denied any involvement.

“After all we have to accept the fact that we are allies. We have only one enemy, which is Israel,” said Jumblatt, who was a vocal supporter of Syria following the civil war but campaigned against Syrian influence in Lebanon after the death of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

Jumblatt said there is a visible increase in Israeli aggression directed toward Lebanon in recent times. Ultimately, the Druze leader said the only chance for peace with Israel is if they give the Palestinians the rights they deserve.

“I’m proud that my father [Kamal Jumblatt] defended the Palestinian cause and died for the Palestinian cause.”

The senior Jumblatt was one of Lebanon’s most veteran political figures and was founder of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon, or PSP, which united leftist parties with a secular pan-Arab ideology and supported the Palestinian nationalist movement.

Walid Jumblatt’s father was assassinated in 1977.