Word: syrians
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...former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. But as fears sweep Beirut of a resumption, after a 15-year timeout, of the bloody civil war that began in 1975, Syria and its allies in the Lebanese government are already taking the heat. Lebanese opposition parties have openly accused pro-Syrian politicians in Beirut of complicity in or authorship of the crime, and have warned President Emil Lahoud and other members of his government to stay away from Wednesday's funeral lest their presence provoke violence. The U.S. responded to the killing by demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, and by summoning home...
...months maneuvering to maintain its fraying control over the fate of a neighboring country it has treated more like a restive province over the past three decades. Hariri, a one-time ally of Syria, had symbolized the best hope of a growing opposition movement in Lebanon to press for Syrian withdrawal. Although he had carefully nurtured his own relationship with Damascus during his tenure as Prime Minister, Hariri had decisively broken with Syria last October when he resigned in protest at efforts to alter Lebanon's constitution, at Syria's behest, to allow the pro-Syrian president Emil Lahoud...
...Syria politicians blamed Hariri, well-connected in Arab capitals and a close friend of France's president Jacques Chirac, for orchestrating the passage earlier this year of UN Security Council resolution 1559, which demands the withdrawal of the 15,000 Syrian troops that remain in Lebanon - Syrian forces first arrived in 1976, eventually enforcing a fragile peace between rival Lebanese factions and armed Palestinian refugees, and running the country as Syria's own fiefdom ever since. New Lebanese elections are scheduled for May, and Hariri had been under mounting pressure to take the lead in an opposition campaign to rally...
...Speaker of Parliament for a Shiite. Hariri was a Sunni, of course, but many of the remaining Sunni leadership are historically close to Syria, as is the current Christian president, Emil Lahoud - although other Christian politicians are more critical of Syria. The Shiites, some of whom have enjoyed Syrian backing, may also be the fastest growing group in Lebanon, their share of the population now possibly greater than their share of the power arrangements. And then there are the Palestinians, a refugee population sustained by visions of returning to homes in towns and villages in Israel that no longer exist...
...hand took a breather and found ways to coexist. But the final shape of the Lebanese political order has never been concluded, a proper dialogue among Lebanon's diverse factions prevented, over the years, by perennial crises in the form of the civil war, the Israeli invasion and the Syrian occupation...