Investor's Business Daily, June 5th, 2007
Mideast: A U.N. complicit in the violence that afflicts Lebanon got one right by approving a tribunal to prosecute suspects in the assassination of its former prime minister. It gives the beleaguered democracy hope.
As the Lebanese Army continued to battle the terrorist group Fatah al-Islam, hunkered down in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp outside the northern port city of Tripoli, a new terrorist front opened in the south.
There, two Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting a group called Jund al-Sham -- Arabic for "Soldiers of Historic Syria" -- in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon.
Last week, the U.N. agency that oversees the Nahr el-Bared camp said it had been aware for months that heavily armed foreigners were moving into the camp, bringing with them mortars, rockets and other heavy weapons. In a BBC interview, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora openly linked Fatah al-Islam to Syrian intelligence.
This brings back sad memories of how UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, stood by for years, silently watching Hezbollah import its missiles and other weapons, digging its bunkers, all in preparation for its using Lebanon and its people as a human shield in the terrorist group's unprovoked attack on Israel.
That war left a Lebanon recovering from its 1975-91 civil war shattered anew and Hezbollah in a position of power to threaten Lebanon's fragile democracy.
So it was heartening to see the U.N. Security Council do the right thing last Wednesday and vote 10-0 with five abstentions to establish an international tribunal to try suspects in a series of assassinations of Lebanese leaders, including the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
Saad Hariri, the son and political heir of the slain premier, told Reuters that the tribunal would end the impunity that political assassins have enjoyed in Lebanon for four decades. The young Hariri and his allies in the governing coalition accuse Syria of orchestrating the bombing that killed his father and 24 others. They also link Damascus to a long list of murders of anti-Syrian political leaders and journalists.
Syria denies the charge, but it was public outrage that forced the Syrian army to withdraw after 29 years of occupation. Syria says it will not cooperate with the tribunal and that no Syrian national will be allowed to testify before it.
The initial report by Detlev Mehlis, the chief U.N. investigator in the Hariri's assassination case, said the decision to assassinate Hariri, someone Damascus feared would rally Lebanese opposition to continued Syrian occupation, "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials."
President Emile Lahoud, who favors Syrian involvement in Lebanon, said that Saniora risked destabilizing Lebanon by pursuing the tribunal. Hariri had resigned as prime minister after a Syria-backed decision to extend the term of the pro-Syrian Lahoud in violation of the Lebanese constitution.
Hezbollah has warned that Lebanon's security and stability would be threatened by the establishment of such a tribunal. Saniora had written U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and asked for the U.N. to set it up since it was unlikely the Lebanese Parliament would establish one over Hezbollah and Syrian-backed opposition.
One thing that might be threatened is the illusion held in the West by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others that Syria could be a partner in peace if we only talked to Damascus, the sight of a recent Pelosi pilgrimage.
If the Syrians want to talk and make nice, they can do so at the Hariri tribunal under oath.
