News Round Up (Aug 21, 2006)

t_desco has brought this Le Figaro article by Georges Malbrunot to our attention: L'ombre du Hezbollah sur l'assassinat de Hariri: 19 aug. 2006. It claims that UN investigators are now searching for a member of Hizbullah, implicated in the Hariri murder. Malbrunot goes on to quote people close to the search to suggest that Syria remains the prime target, but investigators believe that Hizbullah may have had a role and that Syria distributed responsibilities among its allies in Lebanon. Hariri people were helpful with the leaks. It is hard to know how much of this is politically motivated.

Another article from Le Figaro is also of interest: Hubert Vedrine: 'We have to speak with Hamas and with Syria'. The former foreign minister of the Lionel Jospin government denounces "the fiasco" of the US policy in the Middle East. Vedrine explains what France has done wrong in Lebanon and what it has done right and where it should be headed in its relationship with Israel, the US, and Lebanon. He concludes:

I welcome what former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami has rightly written on this score: "war on Hezbollah, peace with Hamas!" We have to go back on the boycott of Hamas, which makes our democratic message inaudible, we have to speak with the Hamas government, and we must restore international aid. That is the meanest blow that we can inflict on the Syrian and Iranian governments and the Islamists. The Bush administration is doomed to fail in the Middle East, and, by refusing to understand this, it exposes us.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party said Monday that in return for a genuine peace with Syria, it would be legitimate for Israel to cede the Golan Heights.

Asked if in exchange for a genuine peace with Damascus, he would be willing to return the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War, Dichter told Army Radio:"In return for a true peace with Syria or with Lebanon, over those issues that from the standpoint of the land have a history, which we know and the Syrians know and the Lebanese know, I think that what we did with Egypt and with Jordan is legitimate here as well. "Dichter said that meant a return to the internationally recognized border.

IsraelNN“The territorial concessions are similar to those we paid for peace with Jordan and Egypt,” stated Dichter. However, he added that the “water issue and the Kinneret are a matter that I would not yield on so easily.”

PM: No talks with Syria if it continues backing terror
By Haaretz Service and Agencies

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that Israel would not negotiate with Syria unless it stops sponsoring terrorist groups. His remarks followed comments earlier in the day by Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, who said that in return for peace with Syria, Israel could give up the Golan Heights.

Asad apologizes: President Asad claimed that he was not referring to Saudi or Egyptian leaders when he called some Arabs "half men" in his speech last week. Walid Muallim, Syria's foreign minister is trying to repair the damage done to Syria's relations with fellow Arab states by the President's speech.

"What President Assad meant by this phrase was those individuals inside Syria and maybe outside it who threw doubts on the ability of the resistance to achieve victory," Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told the Al-Anba daily

Massoud Derhally, the Diplomatic Editor of "Arabian Business," has two new articles of interest on Lebanon: He pursues the Michael Young debate but brings in pro-Hizbullah voices. He also quotes interesting Lebanese on what lessons should be learned from this conflict.

The unvarnished truth: Sunday, 20 August 2006
Rising from the rubble: Sunday, 20 August 2006

Turkish FM heading to Syria as part of peace mission: