Sceptical Lebanese await a promised dialogue to avert a crisis as presidential elections loom. Lucy Fielder reports from Beirut Representatives of Lebanon's sparring factions met in a suburb of Paris over the weekend in "ice-breaking" talks to smooth the way for a dialogue to end months of political crisis. Resulting statements by both sides attested to success in this, but ordinary Lebanese harbour few hopes. Deadlock between a pro-US, anti-Syrian ruling bloc and Hizbullah, which is allied with Iran and Syria, and its allies, has paralysed Lebanon since the assassination of former prime minister, Rafik Al-Hariri and intensified after last summer's war. Two issues plague the divided country: the presidency and opposition demands for a national unity government. Lebanese media reported that French envoy Jean-Claude Cousseran was expected to land in Beirut this week to encourage all sides to keep talking and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was due in late July. Cousseran would visit Damascus before arriving, they reported, a week after a visit to Iran. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Centre in Beirut said France's approach to US foes, also the opposition's backers, could signal a broader European foreign policy shift towards Lebanon and the region, rather than simply that of a new French president, although Nicolas Sarkozy does not have the personal ties with the Hariri family of his predecessor Jacques Chirac. After Sarkozy dubbed Hizbullah a "terrorist" group shortly before the talks, Paris hastened to reassure Hizbullah that it had no intention to list it as such, to avert a threatened boycott. "That damage control was very significant," Saad-Ghorayeb said. "It's partly because the Europeans see the US approach has been fruitless." The spectre of two parallel governments in Lebanon, which would recall the civil war, has also served a "dose of realism", she said. President Emile Lahoud said he may appoint an interim government if a presidential candidate is not agreed upon before elections in September. Lahoud's term was extended by three years in September 2004 under Syrian pressure, which required a constitutional amendment and galvanised opposition to Damascus's post-war domination of its smaller neighbour. Electing a new president has therefore been a central plank of the anti-Syrian 14 March ruling movement. Nonetheless, it suffered an unprecedented breaking of ranks on the issue this week. A bloc dubbed the "Tripoli gathering" announced its insistence that the president must be elected by two -thirds of the members of parliament in accordance with the constitution. The parliamentary majority headed by Saad Al-Hariri has stated its intention to elect a head of state by a simple majority. "The 'majority' loses its majority," read a headline in leftist paper Assafir on 17 July, although the dissidents, who joined high-profile MPs such as Ghassan Tueni and Boutros Harb, spoke out only on this issue. However, it now appears that Hariri's bloc could no longer muster even the half-plus-one of parliament votes with which it intends to appoint the president. Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir joined the dissenters on 16 July, warning of chaos were the constitution not observed to appoint a president, traditionally a Maronite Christian post. This follows a statement by the Council of Maronite bishops earlier in the month accusing the government led by Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora of taking steps to "Islamicise" Lebanon, particularly through the sale of land to "foreigners", widely taken to mean Gulf Arabs. Taken together, the two statements appear to serve a warning from one traditionally dominant sect to another. "The presidency is a Christian issue in the end, and now an essentially Sunni bloc is saying 'we're going to choose the president ourselves', which is one step too far," Saad- Ghorayeb said. Enforcing that impression is the fact that the most popular Christian leader, Michel Aoun, is an opponent of the government. "The patriarch must have seen that this would weaken the Christians and be really quite dangerous for inter-communal relations," she explained. In the north, the army siege of the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp ran into its third month and the army death toll topped 100 with no clear end in view, despite a fierce surge in fighting. The battle with Sunni radicals holed up inside may drag on for weeks, analysts warn, for the army appears little equipped for house-to- house guerrilla warfare. At least 80 militants from the Al-Qaeda- inspired Fatah Al-Islam faction have been killed since fighting broke out on 20 May. Civilian deaths total at least 40, but with the camp inaccessible and ruined, the true toll of Lebanon's worst internal bloodshed since the civil war can only be guessed at. The army stepped up its bombardment late last week. The battle with a few hundred militants, who emerged in the camp in late 2006, has already defied expectations and highlighted the weakness of the ill-equipped Lebanese army in its first major combat since the 1975-1990 war. Fatah Al-Islam retaliated by firing ageing katyusha rockets, which landed near the camp, wounding two people. Some observers considered the use of rockets an escalation, but Timur Goksel, a security analyst and former spokesman of the southern UNIFIL peacekeeping force, said the weapons were obsolete and from old stocks. "These [Fatah Al-Islam] guys are fighting very determinedly. My understanding is their leaders are not around and those left are probably non- Lebanese elements," he said. "They're holed up in buildings and the army is having to go inch by inch." Media reports have described how the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction has taken control of empty parts of Nahr Al-Bared, which may foreshadow Fatah domination of one of the few camps outside its control. Goksel said such cooperation meant little in practice. "It's a classic political game. The aim is not to create a joint security force or anything like that but to impose Lebanese sovereignty on the camp. "The Palestinian groups are aware they could lose their privileged status as enclaves and are trying to show they support the Lebanese authorities by cooperating," he said. Lebanon's 12 Palestinian camps have remained off-limits to the army since the 1969 Cairo Agreement, despite its abrogation in the 1980s. National and army flags now flutter over parts of Nahr Al-Bared. By flaunting its unprecedented incursion, the army may be trying to signal a new chapter in the long-running issue of these security islands, policed by Palestinian factions, whose status has come under the spotlight anew. Most civilians have now been evacuated, army sources said. In the south, a small roadside bomb on 16 July caused no casualties but further complicated the mission of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force. It exploded by a post manned by Tanzanian soldiers monitoring the speed of UN vehicles along the coastal highway to Tyre, a practice that began after a speeding UN water truck lost control and killed four members of a family travelling in their car, including two children. The 16 July attack was the second suffered by UNIFIL since a bolstered force of 13,000 spread across the south following the July 2006 war. A car bomb killed six peacekeepers on 24 June. No one has claimed responsibility for either, but many Lebanese point the finger at Al-Qaeda-type militant groups. Hizbullah condemned both attacks. Goksel said the main consequence of the crude device would be to curtail UNIFIL's mingling with southerners, among whom it had gained some trust. "UNIFIL is in a serious dilemma. It can no longer allow its soldiers to relax among the people and will have to become more concerned with force protection than with the mission itself," Goksel said.
