Word: serail
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...Grand Serail, an Ottoman-era palace that houses Lebanon's government, began its life as a garrison for Turkish soldiers. The buff limestone building was restored after this country's long civil war, and it still looms over downtown Beirut like a hilltop fortress, with its arabesque arches punctuating the fa?ade like so many cannon slits...
...current political battle for Lebanon, the Serail has become a garrison once again, under siege by an angry army of opposition supporters camped out in white refugee tents in the squares of central Beirut. On Sunday, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators answering Hizballah and its allies' call for reinvigorated protests to topple the government, the Lebanese Army lined the causeways leading to the Serail with razor-wire barricades and tank columns, while riot police in full black battle armor guarded the citadel's gates...
...heightened security was one reason why the Prime Minister's speech from the Serail on Sunday - to mark the anniversary of the car bomb assassination of an anti-Syrian newspaper publisher - was so sparsely attended. In the silent moment before the telecast went live, Fouad Siniora stood at his podium in the chandeliered Great Hall with his back to the windows facing downtown while the sound of the chants and cheers from the miked-up multitude below seeped through the drawn curtains and echoed off the chamber's marble walls. "Down with Siniora," the demonstrators have often shouted. "Siniora...
...government sits in the palatial Grand Serail and discusses plans for a cease-fire. "The Americans are listening to us," said one government advisor. But the 48-hour halt to Israeli's air campaign announced by Rice from Jerusalem after the disaster at Qana hasn't stopped bombs falling. There were air strikes in the south. And if the feelings are too raw for Rice to visit Beirut - Lebanese leaders made clear Sunday that there was no point in her making her scheduled visit to the city Monday - the vacuum left by the limits on what America is prepared...
...chance, Lebanon's twelfth cease-fire takes hold, the man responsible will be Premier Rashid Karami, whose amazing patience makes him look like "the man of eternal hope. "A Sunni Moslem lawyer from Tripoli, Karami locked himself in the Serail (Government House) during the peak of the most recent fighting and vowed he would not leave until the street battles ended. In effect, Karami became the government. He took over the direction of security affairs-he holds the Defense portfolio in addition to being Premier-and worked round the clock without the help of aides, pleading with leaders...