Word: lebanons
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...country constantly on the verge of civil war and invasion does not need two contending governments. But that is the dangerous scenario facing Lebanon this week. On Wednesday, members of the country's parliament are scheduled to vote on a replacement for Emile Lahoud, whose term ends midnight Friday. By unwritten agreement in this deeply sectarian nation, the President must be a Maronite Christian (the Prime Minister must be Sunni; the speaker of the assembly Shi'ite). Lahoud was an advocate of the policies of neighboring Syria, which until 2005 was the overlord of Lebanon...
...Lebanon's powerful Shi'ite political party Hizballah, which possesses its own military, is using its influence to press for a new President friendly to its agenda and the interests of its Syrian and Iranian backers. Meanwhile, pro-Western, anti-Syrian politicians threaten to elect a President from their own camp if the opposition rejects a consensus candidate. Hizballah and its allies say they will not recognize an anti-Syrian President and hint they will form a rival government instead...
...outcome of the last-minute negotiations will not only affect the future stability of Lebanon, but will also help shape the tussle for control of the Mideast between the United States, Israel and Washington's mainly Sunni Arab allies, against Iran, Syria and their local allies, particularly Hizballah. "What we have now is a confrontation between states taking place in Lebanon," said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Center in Beirut...
...trends are going in the wrong direction, and we need to prepare ourselves for a decade or so of protracted confrontation,” Casey said. The US military, Casey said, should ready itself for both conventional state warfare and urban warfare. He said the 2006 war in Lebanon, in which Hezbollah guerrillas used sophisticated technology, represents the type of war that the US will have to fight in the future. To prepare for such conflicts, the US military will increase its size by 74,000 over the next three years. The army also desperately needs more...
PAMELA LEAHEY, LEBANON...