oh shit pierre gemayel was assassinated!

U.S., Bush denounce slaying in Lebanon
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 33 minutes ago

President Bush denounced Tuesday's assassination of a Lebanese leader, saying that Syria and Iran are trying to undermine the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

"We support the Saniora government and its democracy and we support the Lebanese people's desire to live in peace," Bush said after having breakfast with U.S. troops stationed here. "And we support their efforts to defend their democracy against attempts by Syria, Iran and allies to foment instability and violence in that important country."

Bush stopped short of specifically blaming Iran or Syria, calling for a full investigation to identify "those people and those forces" behind the killing.

Bush said the U.N. Security Council must move quickly to establish a special tribunal to investigate the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Security Council is facing a deadline to approve a letter endorsing an agreement with Lebanon to create a tribunal.

"I strongly believe that the United Nations Security Council ought to act today," Bush said. "For the sake of peace, the free world must reject those who undermine young democracies and murder in the name of their hateful ideology."

In Washington earlier, the State Department assailed the murder of the Lebanese Christian leader, Pierre Gemayel, who was a foe of Syrian involvement in the country.

"We are shocked by this assassination," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters. "We view it as an act of terrorism. We also view it as an act of intimidation."

Burns stopped short of casting blame for the assassination but took note of recent statements by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and others that he said are meant "to destabilize Lebanon and to divide the country."

Nasrallah has urged his followers to prepare for mass demonstrations to topple the U.S.-supported government headed by Saniora if it ignores Hezbollah's demands to form a national unity Cabinet. Hezbollah, an ally of Syria, gained political strength in the country as a result of the war it fought last summer against Israel.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Saniora with condolences and to reiterate U.S. support for democracy in Lebanon, Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said.

In New York, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, raised the possibility of Syrian involvement in the slaying of Gemayel. The U.S. has accused Syria and Iran of plotting to topple Saniora's government, which is dominated by politicians opposed to Syrian influence in Lebanon.

Referring to an investigation into the assassination in 2005 of Hariri, who also tried to limit Syrian influence in the country, Bolton told reporters: "I think people can draw their own conclusions."

Burns praised Saniora's 20-month old government, seeing it as a step toward returning Lebanon "to a position of real sovereignty, freeing it from Syria's influence and from "the politics of violence and assassination."

He said the United States views the assassination of Gemayel as an act of intimidation against the coalition.

"We believe it is the responsibility of all countries to support the Saniora government," Burns added.

He said it is very important that those who would use violence to divide Lebanon not be allowed to succeed.

"We will give full support to the Saniora government in the days and weeks ahead," Burns said.

In brief remarks at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said of the killing, "It is certainly a tragedy for Lebanon and for those in Lebanon and that part of the world that believe in peace and representative systems."

___

Associated Press Writer George Gedda contributed to this story.

Anti-Syrian Lebanese minister assassinated

by Nayla Razzouk 32 minutes ago

Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel was gunned down in a Beirut suburb, the latest victim in a spate of attacks on anti-Syrian politicians, and angry voices quickly blamed Damascus.

Gunmen also opened fire on the Beirut office of another anti-Syrian figure, state minister for parliamentary affairs Michel Pharaon.

As people from across the political spectrum called for calm in a country deeply divided country between allies and opponents of former power broker Syria, angry young men burned tires in Beirut's Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh.

Prominent Christian leader Samir Geagea called for the "immediate resignation" of Damascus's protege, President Emile Lahoud, who himself denounced the killing as a "terrorist act."

Gemayel, a 34-year-old scion of one of the country's most prominent Christian Maronite families, was critically wounded in the attack and died soon afterwards in a nearby hospital, a security source said.

The state news agency said Gemayel, a member of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, was killed "by gunshots on his convoy near the Mar Antonios church in the region of Jdaideh."

It later said his bodyguard, Samir Shartuni, was also killed.

Witnesses said he was apparently driving the car when it was attacked by gunmen, who shot him in the head. The window on the driver's side was riddled with bullet holes.

Dozens of family members and friends rushed to the hospital, many of them shouting in anger and others wailing.

Among them was Gemayel's father and former president, Amin, who called for restraint from his followers and for prayer.

"We do not want instinctive reactions or revenge. We are thinking about how to protect ... Lebanon's freedom," he told a crowd in tears at the hospital.

After news bulletins announced the murder, panic spread across the capital where cars horns honked amid giant traffic jams and many people were seen rushing home.

Tires were burnt, cars damaged and posters of Christians allied with the pro-Syrian Hezbollah were torn apart in Beirut and in Gemayel's mountainous hometown of Bikfaya, east of the capital.

Television channels interrupted their normal broadcasts to air classical music after the death was confirmed.

The head of the anti-Syrian majority in parliament, Saad Hariri, broke off a press conference to accuse the Syrian regime of "trying to kill every free person" in Lebanon.

"The cycle (of killings) has resumed," he said.

Hariri was referring to a spate of assassinations and attempts in the past two years. These included the murder of his own father, five-time premier Rafiq Hariri, in a massive bomb blast on the Beirut seafront in February last year.

Hariri later told CNN he believed the killing was linked to a looming UN Security Council decision on endorsing an international tribunal to try suspects in the murder of his father.

"We believe that the hands of Syria are all over the place," he said.

"This is not a time to give up. Blood has been shed to free our country from the hands of the regime, from the regime that was involved in killing Rafiq Hariri, in killing a lot of people," he said.

A UN probe has implicated senior Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies in Hariri's murder, which sparked protests that forced Damascus to end nearly three decades of military domination in Lebanon.

The Syrian regime has denied links with the attacks.

Damascus condemned Gemayel's murder as "a crime aimed at destabilizing Lebanon and disturbing the civil peace in the country," according to the state news agency SANA.

But Social Affairs Minister Nayla Moawad, a Christian member of the anti-Syrian camp, accused Damascus of seeking to kill ministers to force the collapse of the Western-backed government.

Prominent pro-Syrian former minister Sleiman Frangieh said "we regret the assassination ... We hope that his blood would help bring about a true reconciliation" among the Lebanese.

Gemayel was the first anti-Syrian figure to be assassinated since journalist Gibran Tueni was killed in a bomb attack on December 12.

He was the nephew of Bashir Gemayel, who was murdered in 1982 at the height of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, only nine days before he was to be sworn in as president. Amin Gemayel was elected to replace him, and he served until 1988.

Pierre was the namesake of his grandfather, who founded the Christian Kataeb (Phalangist) party in the 1930s.

Born on September 23, 1972, he was elected to parliament in 2000 and became industry minister in July 2005. He was married, with two sons.

The United States promptly denounced the murder as an "act of terrorism."

"We were shocked by this assassination. We view it as an act of terrorism," said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett also swiftly condemned the killing.

"Clearly we condemn it. We are dismayed," she told a joint news conference in London with visiting Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni. "There are enough problems in Lebanon already."

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the assassination was a "new attempt to destabilise Lebanon."

"Faced with this new attempt to destabilise Lebanon, France wishes to assure the Lebanese people that it is determined to fight alongside it to uphold its sovereignty and independence," he told parliament.

Control experiment: start a thread about this story (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/789904.html) and see how many posts it gets.

If the summer war didn't wake them up to this problem then I'm not sure what will. But rest assured that the UN gets notified everytime an Israeli jet passes within 5km of the Lebanese border.

i'm really sad that most of the world can't react to tragedy this way. mostly thinking about one particular person...

Too bad Israel weren't allowed to pursue their military solution to the Lebanon problem.

Got one of his phalange party colleagues on now. Funeral thursday 1pm. They are calling a mass demonstration for the funeral.

That is as reprehensible as saying, 'Too bad Hezbollah weren't allowed to pursue their military solution to the Israel problem.', and if you don't know that then you should fuck off and grow up.

Um, no. Israel bombed the shit out of a whole bunch of people who had nothing to do with Hezbollah (who Israel had complete and total rights to bomb the shit out of). Military solutions to the problems in the Middle East are increasingly turning into proxy wins for Iran, and that's not doing anybody any good.

This is ridiculous. I have no idea how you're getting "most reasonable country" from "decades of ethnic tensions + rising extremism + ongoing civil wars + terrorist group in govt + puppet state for two other Middle East nations". In any case, the correct answer (besides Israel) is clearly Jordan (relative political calm post-1970, non-dipshitty monarchy, etc.)

This story has actually gotten a surprising amount of traction in the US. It was the cover story of my local paper, CNN + NPR did long segments on it, even the local top 40 pop station mentioned it during their news brief. Maybe it was a slow news day, but I'm glad it's getting some kind of attention.

I care about Lebanon because it's teetering on the brink of collapsing into turmoil, and thereby will be subject to a greater degree of control by Iran & Syria, whereas a year ago it was a bright spot of hope in the Middle East when the Syrian army was forced out of the country PEACEFULLY BY THE LEBANESE PEOPLE. Certainly there were the endemic problems in the country but it was headed in a better direction. Israel's overreaction to Hezbollah's aggression exacerbated the fault lines and crippled the nascent Siniora goverment, just as taking out Saddam Hussein destabilized the Gulf region.

This strategy of militarily destroying an enemy in the Middle East has resulted in creating power vacuums and new breeding grounds for extremism. As these situations unfold in Lebanon and Iraq I continue to think that Iran and the terrorist groups are playing one hell of a game of rope-a-dope with Israel and the US.

But Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, said his government was "categorically not" behind Gemayel's killing. Moustapha suggested the killings were an attempt to damage movement toward closer cooperation between Washington and Damascus over Iraq.

"Isn't it strange that whenever the situation would become slightly, slightly toward engagement with Syria, every time this happens, immediately an assassination takes place?" he asked.

Seriously, can somebody explain the logic here? So he's claiming that anti-Syrian Lebanese killed an anti-Syrian politician to prevent the US from forming relations with Syria? Do we have to burn the village in order to save it? Or, is he saying that the Americans killed Gemayel to give them a more convenient excuse for not dealing with Syria? WTF?

I'm quite taken with the idea that Gemayel was killed as part of some intra-Maronite feud, if only because I made it up all by myself and have not read it anywhere in the media.