Free Republic

BEIRUT - Lebanese anti-Syrian opposition leader Walid Jumblatt said on Friday that the claim of responsibility by the Al Qaeda terror network for rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel is “a silly Syrian game.” “The aim of throwing Al Qaeda’s name into the rocket firing is that Syria wants to tell the world community that you asked us to leave Lebanon, look now Lebanon is becoming a base for Al Qaeda,” Jumblatt was quoted as saying. On Thursday, a statement by Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for a missile attack on Israel from Lebanon as part of a “new...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A leading Lebanese opposition figure has urged the country's Syrian-backed security chiefs to resign to make way for an international probe into the killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. "It is not possible to carry out a just, serious, clear and transparent investigation if the heads of the agencies remain in their place," Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt told reporters on Saturday. "We warned against a security state over and over." A U.N. fact-finding team said in a report released on Thursday that Lebanon's own inquiry into Hariri's February 14 killing was seriously flawed and called for...

Lebanese Defy Protest Ban as Debate on Hariri Rages Mon Feb 28, 2005 08:31 AM ET By Lucy Fielder BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Syrian-backed government came under fire in parliament Monday over the assassination of ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri, while streets away thousands defied a protest ban to demand it stand down. The debate, which looked certain to roll on to Tuesday, was expected to close with a no-confidence vote. But the government has a sound majority and was expected to win. Banks, schools and businesses closed in a general strike the opposition called to coincide with the debate on Hariri's...

MUKHTARA, Lebanon - Walid Jumblatt, the most prominent anti-Syrian voice in Lebanon, is holed up in his ancestral mountain palace, planning strategy with his allies behind its high gates, out of fear he may be marked for assassination like his late ally, the former prime minister killed in a bomb blast. Jumblatt, a Druse warlord turned politician, is even reported to have packed off his 22-year-old son to France to ensure a survivor from his immediate family to carry his mantle if he is killed. He denies that's his motive, saying his son, Taymoor, is just finishing his studies. "I...

OP-ED COLUMNIST this is the most powerful question in the world today: Why not here? People in Eastern Europe looked at people in Western Europe and asked, Why not here? People in Ukraine looked at people in Georgia and asked, Why not here? People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, Why not here? Thomas Kuhn famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody's vantage point changes. "Why not here?" is a Kuhnian question, and as you...

February 24, 2005 The leader of the Lebanese opposition, a sharp critic of Washington foreign policy, says he's changed his view of the U.S. war in Iraq, seeing it now as a catalyst for democratic change across the Arab world. Walid Jumblatt Druze Muslim leader Walid Jumblatt, who is calling for an uprising against Lebanon's Syrian occupiers, is almost sounding like a neoconservative, says Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who interviewed him in Beirut Monday. "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," Jumblatt told the Post...

JERUSALEM – Lebanese security officials backed by Syria carried out the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who knew his life was in danger, a Lebanese opposition leader told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview today. "Lebanese security services handled by Syrian security were behind the assassination of Hariri," said Walid Jumblatt, a leading opposition figure in Lebanon. He said in a meeting with Hariri two weeks ago the former prime minister said he felt he was in danger. "Hariri said something bad was going to happen and that it is either going to be you or me." Hariri, along...

Walid Jumblatt, chairman of the (Druze) Socialist Progressive Party and member of the Lebanese parliament, praised the January 14, 2004 suicide bombing by a Palestinian woman in Gaza. The following are excerpts from his statements:(1) "Yesterday, the Palestinian mother Reem Al-Riyashi sacrificed herself, and by so doing joined the columns of the brave Jihad warriors and broke the atrocious and troublesome Arab silence, the helplessness, and the retreat that precede failure and disintegration. She offered hope in a sea of complacency, indecisiveness, and fear. It is a new Intifada. It is the Intifada of the revolutionary Palestinian woman and of...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A top Lebanese politician enraged the American embassy in Beirut Monday by saying he hoped the next attack on the number two in the Defense Department would prove fatal. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt described Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as a "virus" who needed to be destroyed, a day after the American emerged unscathed from a guerrilla rocket attack on the fortified Baghdad hotel where he was staying. The U.S. embassy described Jumblatt's remarks as "outrageous." The Druze chief and head of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party said in a statement he hoped Wolfowitz, who he criticized as...