The Security Council's ratification of a special tribunal to try the suspected assassins of invokes fears of foreign intervention in Lebanon, Lucy Fielder reports from Beirut On 30 May, the Security Council voted by 10-0 with five abstentions to ratify the special tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former prime minister , which plunged Lebanon into an enduring political crisis. That afternoon, unlit candles in paper bags dotted streets of Sunni areas of Beirut which support the Future Movement of Al-Hariri's son Saad. Pop songs dedicated to their "martyr" and "unveiling the truth" blared through loudspeakers on the main road in Aicha Bakkar in western Beirut. Fireworks and celebratory gunfire punctuated the night air after 11pm, when the Security Council made its vote, which was based upon Chapter VII of the UN Charter. A partial curfew curbed the risk of street battles. But it also highlighted the tensions connected with the tribunal, in a city where one man's celebration can be another's provocation. Many Lebanese believe that the United Nations has ridden roughshod over their sovereignty by bypassing their constitution, in order to impose the court. Resolution 1757 gives the Lebanese until 10 June to agree on the tribunal themselves before it comes into force. China, Russia, Indonesia, Qatar and South Africa abstained, objecting to the reference to Chapter VII, which provides for military enforcement of the resolution if necessary. "It is not appropriate for the Security Council to impose such a tribunal upon Lebanon, especially under Chapter VII," South Africa's representative Dumisani Kumalo said, expressing fears about the politicisation of international law, and the establishment of a worrying precedent. However, many in Lebanon and the Middle East hail the tribunal as a welcome challenge to a culture of impunity in Lebanon, and the region, as a whole. Few would dispute the need to unmask and bring to trial those who blew up Al-Hariri's armed convoy, killing the former prime minister and 22 others on Beirut's seafront. Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in May asking that the world body unilaterally establish the tribunal, given that all Lebanese routes to such an end had failed. Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri has refused to convene parliament's spring session because he does not regard the government as legitimate ever since the resignation of six, mostly Shia, ministers last November in connection with a government effort to push through the court draft. Resolution 1757 alludes to Al-Siniora's letter, but not to the detailed objections of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. One of the many criticisms that he and many legal experts have levelled is that the treaty concerning the nature of the court was negotiated and signed by the government and not the president. Yet, under Article 52 of Lebanon's constitution, the president must negotiate and sign any international treaty in consultation with the prime minister. By invoking Chapter VII, the Security Council bypassed this constitutional requirement. Yet the resolution refers several times to the United Nations' agreement with the Lebanese government. "It's very unfortunate that we are in a position where a decision by the Security Council overrides the national constitution," said Omar Nashabe, head of the American University of Science and Technology's crime research department and judiciary writer for the independent, pro- opposition Al-Akhbar newspaper. "This is a clear violation of Lebanon's sovereignty and independence." Many fear that the decision of the council, which invokes Chapter VII on the grounds that Al-Hariri's killing posed a threat to international peace and security, could itself shake an already fragile Lebanon, and deepen its internal divisions. The dangers are clear in a country recovering from the 1975-90 Civil War, reeling from Israel's war with Hizbullah last summer, and, dangerously divided over the very nature of the state and its foreign policy orientation. Lebanon's March 14 parliamentary majority -- led by Saad Al-Hariri -- has staked its popularity on the tribunal since coming to power after the 2005 withdrawal of Syria, which it blames for Al-Hariri's death. Opponents led by the Shia Hizbullah party have agreed to the court in principle but cried foul on the manner of its establishment, leading to accusations that the group is doing its ally Syria's bidding in trying to undermine it. Arms which the guerrillas use to fight Israel are believed to pass through Syria, so Hizbullah may indeed be wary of backing a trial that its allies oppose. It also fears that Israel and the United States hope to use the court to achieve what they failed to last summer -- the disarmament of its guerrillas. Hizbullah aside, many Lebanese agree that the court undermines Lebanese sovereignty and could be used as a tool for foreign intervention. "Any decision the court makes will become subject to political disagreement and turmoil and will not allow justice to be achieved," Nashabe said, adding that internal disagreements could lead to doubts about the jurisdiction of foreign judges and even the verdict. By undermining Lebanon's justice system instead of bolstering it, the international community could be nurturing Lebanon's culture of impunity. As always, the suspicion of Western double standards lurks. While the UN Security Council has passed no less than six resolutions related to the Al-Hariri assassination and subsequent crimes, it remained silent on Israel's destruction of swathes of the south and the killing of more than 1,000 civilians last summer, not to mention countless crimes against the Palestinians. Geraud De Geouffre de La Pradelle, emeritus professor of law at Paris University X-Nanterre, expressed grave concerns that the way the tribunal was being set up could undermine the credibility of the international legal system. "One takes a series of serious crimes which, it is true, have an international importance, but which are not international crimes, and one creates an international tribunal for them. Ok, why not?" he said following a May conference on the tribunal in Beirut. "But in the same region, the same country even, there is a mass of international crimes which would merit an international tribunal. Yet concerning the thousands of victims [of Israeli bombing], the destruction, no one speaks of the law. "So discourse by Western powers concerning law, democracy, justice becomes simply ridiculous," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "The system has been weakened." Al-Hariri's killing was far from the first assassination in Lebanon's troubled history. The 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990, witnessed countless massacres, assassinations and the disappearance of at least 17,000 people. In the 1990s, instead of an international tribunal to try the perpetrators of such crimes and lay Lebanon's wakeful ghosts to rest, a general amnesty law was adopted, rescuing the warlords from accountability. Hassan Al-Jouni, international law professor at the Lebanese University, said the Lebanese had agreed on and requested a Lebanese court of international character, but instead an international court had been established with foreign judges outnumbering Lebanese ones and a foreign prosecutor-general. He said the clear enthusiasm of the United States, France and Britain for the court, and their opposition to Syria, suggest it could be politicised and used to pursue Hizbullah after Israel failed to crush the group militarily last year. "There's a fear that this court, through trying Al-Hariri's killers, could open the files of the resistance and try fighters because they're resisting Israel. That would set a dangerous precedent," he said. "A court established under Chapter VII could drag Lebanon into the unknown," Jouni said, adding that invoking Chapter VII raised questions about enforcement, particularly now that the UN force for southern Lebanon, UNIFIL, had been expanded after last year's war. "There's also a fear that UNIFIL could be charged with implementing the court's decisions and arresting suspects, as happened in Yugoslavia." The international investigation headed by Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz has extended its mandate until June 2008 to probe Al-Hariri's assassination and 16 other assassinations and bombings. No one has yet been charged.
