Word: siniora
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...that would give the opposition greater representation in and effective veto power over a new "National Unity" government is being promoted by an Arab League envoy. There was a time not too long ago that such a deal could perhaps have been enough to assuage Hizballah's concerns that Siniora and his government are American puppets who are intent on disarming the Shi'ite militia and reshaping the Middle East in Israel's favor. But the standoff between the Hizballah-led opposition, and the government has lately become so raw, and so personal, that it is hard to imagine anything...
...Hizballah is currently seeking to topple the U.S.-backed government of Fouad Siniora in Beirut, which signed off on the U.N. resolution requiring that the movement disarm. The Iran-backed militia plainly has no intention of giving up its weapons, and Israeli intelligence sources fear that it could be emboldened to begin openly resuming military activities in the south, which raises the prospect of a new Israeli offensive. Some fear Hizballah might even deliberately provoke another bruising round by kidnapping a few more Israeli soldiers - though Hizballah chief Haassan Nasrallah admitted he was stunned by the Israeli onslaught last summer...
...Israel set out to destroy Hizballah last summer and ended up making its leader, Nasrallah, only stronger. In Beirut, Lebanese politicians fret that it's only because Hizballah came out of the war with Israel relatively unscathed that Nasrallah is attempting his current power play of bringing down the Siniora government. Given the current tumult in the Middle East, the outcome of a second fight to the finish for Israel could prove even more unpredictable - and possibly disastrous...
...Talal Salman, editor of Lebanon's As Safir newspaper, wrote Tuesday that this Arab backing for Siniora has increased the defiance of the Hizballah-led opposition, making "an inter-Lebanese solution to the crisis out of reach...