US acting like "unjust school principal:" Lebanon parliament speaker

AYTARUN, Lebanon, Feb 10 (AFP) - Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri on Sunday accused the United States of behaving like an "unjust school principal" in the world while remaining biased in favour of Israel.

"The American administration is behaving around the world like an unjust school principal in an elementary school," Berri said in a ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a school in this tiny southern village. "It resort to threats and demonstrations of strength against innocent nations which had been the victims of colonialism, economic embargoes, backwardness, illnesses and hunger," he said, apparently referring to developing countries and mainly Arab states.

Berri's speech came following fears in Lebanon that Washington was lending an ear to Israel's campaign against the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah to be targeted in a next phase of its "war on terror." Berri accused Washington of bias in favour of the Jewish state as it "ignores the causes (of problems) when it comes to Israel." "It ignores the truth that Lebanon has become a dumping place for refugees of the brotherly Palestinian nation since 1948 because of the (creation of Israel) and the displacement of the (Palestinians) from their territory and homeland," he said.

"The American administration ignores the truth that Lebanon has not taken part in any of the wars in the region and despite that, has been targetted by daily aggressions in addition to invasions and subsequently occupation." Berri said "we will not hesitate to confront the Israeli threats to use or resort to force against our country, and we assert our right to confront any violation to our sovereignty by land, sea and air."

"We assert our right to continue the liberation of our land which Israel occupies, chiefly the Shebaa Farms and the (nearby) Kfarshuba hills, with all means, capabilities and capacities of our country and people," he said.

After the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, Washington included Hezbollah on a blacklist of organisations whose assets it is attempting to freeze under its anti-terror campaign. But Lebanon has refused to comply, insisting Hezbollah is a local resistance group fighting Israeli occupation and not a terrorist movement with global reach.

Israel continues to occupy the Shebaa Farms, a mountainous region on the Lebanese-Syrian borders it seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and which is still claimed by Beirut. Hezbollah, which spearheads the guerrilla war to demand an Israeli withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms, was instrumental in forcing Israel's May 2000 troop pullout from southern Lebanon.

Lebanon calls for EU "initiative" to end Mideast violence

BEIRUT, Feb 10 (AFP) - President Emile Lahoud hailed Sunday the European Union for vowing to adopt an active Middle East policy and called for an "initiative" from Brussels to end the bloodshed in the Palestinian territories. "The European position which emanated from European foreign ministers in Spain should form a solid base for a European initiative to help ease the regional crisis and end the freeze brought about by the Israeli policy," Lahoud told AFP.

Such an initiative should also help "create a new political reality to counter the reality which Israel is attempting to impose on the countries of  the region, for the benefit of its own interests," he said. "Force cannot be a solution ... as the violence carried out by Israel only leads to more violence," Lahoud added.

"The policy of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon has foiled all attempts and efforts spent to end the blood bath in the occupied Palestinian territories." Lahoud said the "European position in general, and the French stand in particular, are compatible with long-held Lebanese demands for achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region."

Such a peace should be based on the land-for-peace principle of the 1991 Madrid conference that launched the Middle East peace process as well as international resolutions, "contrary to the hostile Israeli position which is seen every day in the occupied Palestinian territories, with killings, destructions, displacements, and with violations of Lebanon's air, land and sea sovereignty."

Lahoud said the positions of "French President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine reflect an accurate understanding of the situation in the Middle East region, which is clearly different from the American policy."

After a two-day brainstorming retreat in western Spain, EU foreign ministers renewed Saturday their determination to play an active role to help end 16 months of Israeli-Palestinian strife.

The EU foreign ministers particularly called for politics and security to  go hand in hand in the quest to end the crisis -- a strategy rejected by Israel and US President George W. Bush who insist on putting security first by demanding that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat cracks down first on extremists.

France has presented proposals to break the Middle East peace stalemate, including new elections in the Palestinian territories to cement Arafat's legitimacy and marginalise extremists, an offer also rejected by Washington.

EU discusses application of association treaty with Lebanon

BEIRUT, Feb 8 (AFP) - European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy held talks in Beirut Friday with the Lebanese authorities on putting the Lebanon-European Union association treaty, initialled on January 10, into effect. "I discussed the main points of putting the association agreement into effect. We spoke about our work programme for the years ahead", Lamy told the press after meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

"We are therefore now clear on what we want to do together in the areas of trade, economic cooperation, support for modernisation and reforms in this country," he added. Lamy, who had arrived in Syria earlier Friday on the first stage of a five-day trip to the Middle East which will take him to Jordan on Saturday, also met Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.

The Lebanese authorities "know that a certain number of European investors will not come if the basic rules of transparency, security and foreseeability are not in place," he told journalists. "The intentions are there. It now remains for them to be put into practice," the European commissioner added.   "To stimulate trade and investment, we have to get rid of inflexibility, a system of licences, small monopolies, percentages tied to operations that are more or less legal," Lamy said.

According to a source from the European Commission, there are "a few irritations" on the part of European investors. "Stable rules of transparency that can be provided for are not yet a great Lebanese tradition," according to the same source.

Lamy recalled that the trade ministers of the countries of the EU and the Mediterranean are due to attend a meeting in Toledo, Spain, in March, under the rotating EU presidency currently held by Madrid, in the context of the Euromed process.

He said that the "very important question" of the rules of origin of products from the south will be on the agenda. Once resolved, it is likely to unblock trade between Mediterranean countries and those to the north, particularly in the textiles sector.

Lamy later had talks with Trade Minister Basil Fleihan, who said afterwards that the government was prepared to push through laws encouraging competition and opposing monopolies. The government has prepared a draft law to end monopolies on imports, annoying the powerful importers' lobby.

Fleihan also said the EU was ready to help Lebanon to join the World Trade Organisation, with a first round of negotiations set to begin in the next few weeks.

Wanted French Lebanese businessman denies embezzling 1988 hostages ransom

BEIRUT, Feb 8 (AFP) - A Lebanese businessman accused of money-laundering has denied that payments discovered by French intelligence were linked to a suspected ransom for the freeing of French hostages in Lebanon in 1988. "I can tell you the sums are not the money of any kind of ransom or embezzled ransom and that they were never used in any kind of corruption" operation, Iskandar Safa he said in a letter published Friday by the weekly Revue du Liban.

The letter dated January 13 was addressed to the French judge investigating the case. A French intelligence report suggests a ransom was paid to secure the release of the hostages. Safa has been slapped with an international arrest warrant by judges who are looking into the claims the alleged ransom money paid by the French government may have been embezzled by the negotiators.

On January 7, French newspaper Le Monde published the report by the domestic counter-intelligence service DST saying that for several years Safa had been paying regular sums of money to the right-wing French politician and Euro-MP Jean-Charles Marchiani.

Safa took part in the negotiations at the time of the hostage crisis and is currently living in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. But Safa's lawyers explained that the transfers which the DST claims are ransom money were paid to Safa's brother, Akram, who "needed them for his work and personal expenses."

Safa's lawyers argued the accusations against their client were the result of "political settling of accounts" ahead of France's presidential elections next April, during which President Jacques Chirac, who was prime minister in 1988, will seek a new mandate.

Marchiani is a close ally to then interior minister and presidential candidate Charles Pasqua, who maintains the ransom was never paid and has accused the left of trying to harm Chirac.

Arafat "irreplaceable" say Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

by Nagib Khazzaka

RASHIDIYEH, Lebanon, Feb 10 (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may have declared Yasser Arafat "irrelevant," but Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are offering wholehearted support for their "irreplaceable" leader. "There is no alternative to Arafat and nobody can replace him while he is alive. He is our president. He will emerge strengthened by the reclusion in Ramallah that Sharon has forced upon him," says Salha Hussein, a housewife in the Rashidiyeh camp, 15 kilometres (eight miles) from the Israeli border.

Sharon has kept Arafat under virtual house arrest in the West Bank city since early December, following a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks, and his offices there remain surrounded by tanks. "Arafat is conducting a war of national liberation, while Sharon is a terrorist who has been killing Palestinians on their own occupied land for the past 35 years," charged student Ikram Mishafi.

"You can't get around Arafat. Who else besides him could have imposed the Oslo accords on the Palestinian people with Israel, which involved painful concessions, mainly the renunciation of two thirds of Palestine," says Sultan Abul Aynain, the Lebanese head of Arafat's Fatah movement.

Based in Rashidiyeh, where a giant picture of Arafat hangs over the main entrance, Abul Aynain adds that "the departure of Arafat will deprive the world of a negotiating voice capable of promoting peace in the Middle East. "Arafat has never lied, he is at the same time a war leader and a man of peace. Furthermore, he clearly showed his colours in 1974 to the United Nations General Assembly: "in one hand I carry a gun, in the other an olive branch.'"

According to Firas, a Fatah official who lives in the neighbouring camp of  Bourj Shamali, "Arafat was badly hit by the death of (Israeli) prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, killed by an Israeli extremist, and again today by Sharon, who is torpedoing the peace process.

"Political dialogue between Israel and Arafat must be restarted quickly so that it is not overwhelmed by Islamists and radicals," adds Firas, who says he opposes suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. A farm worker from the camp, Mohamad Ibrahim, like many other Palestinians there, criticised Sharon for trying to put Arafat "out of play".

"How can the leader of an enemy government give himself the right to want to eliminate Arafat, who has a historic legitimacy, who has led the fight to build a Palestinian state alongside Israel since 1965 and who was elected by a large majority?" he asks.

"Despite everything, Arafat is our historic leader," says Sawsan, a young militant from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose leader, Ahmad Saadat, has been jailed by Arafat under pressure from the Israelis.

There are similar feelings in Ain el-Helweh camp, 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the north, even among the Islamist movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Nadia Ismail, a pharmacy employee who wears an Islamic headscarf, says she "is totally with Arafat".

Furniture salesman Mohamad, a supporter of Hamas, says "there is nobody better than Arafat to defend the rights of the Palestinian people". Teacher Issam Haddad, one of the millions of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their lands when Israel was created in 1948, says "Arafat will not abandon our right of return. He is pragmatic and tries to get the maximum, but piece by piece."

Israel opposes the return of the refugees for fear it will skew the demography of the Jewish state. One of the rare discordant notes in this concert comes from Munir Maqdah, a Fatah official opposed to the Oslo accords, "which do away with the principle of the destruction of Israel.

"I am with him (Arafat) so long as he fights Israel with weapons," says the bearded Maqdah, who has forged links with the radicals and the pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian Islamists.