Syrian Influence Is Seen in Lebanese Parliamentary Vote
[The Traitor Aoun]
By John KifnerNY Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 16 - As the four-week Lebanese elections approach their last round on Sunday, opposition leaders, critics and Western diplomats contend that Syrian intelligence operatives, intertwined over 15 years with the Lebanese security services, are still operating here and influencing the vote despite the withdrawal of Syrian troops and official denials from Damascus."The Syrians are still controlling the army, the security services," said a former high-ranking Lebanese intelligence officer, who stipulated that his name could not be used because of the danger of assassination. "They issue orders by phone, by e-mail, by fax," the former officer said. "Everybody in this government is still manipulated by Syria."The Syrians and their allies here are working to increase turnout for the long-exiled Gen. Michel Aoun's candidates on Sunday in the last of four rounds of parliamentary voting. Their goal is to secure the rule of Syria's handpicked Lebanese president, Émil Lahoud, which has grown more likely with General Aoun's electoral victories in the last week. The demands by the opposition coalition for President Lahoud's ouster are fading as swiftly as the coalition's electoral prospects.This appears to mean a continued, if more shadowy, influence by Syria, even though General Aoun returned here after 15 years of exile as a Lebanese nationalist and Maronite Catholic symbol of resistance to Syria.The crux of the problem, the former officer and others suggested, is the relationships - often profitable and corrupt - between the Syrian intelligence officers, who functioned much like proconsuls here, and the security and military intelligence services of Mr. Lahoud, the former Lebanese army commander."I have seen personally the mukhtars and the mayors being contacted by the intelligence of the army to vote for the Aoun list," the former officer said, referring to pressure put on local officials in voting on June 12 in the mountains north of Beirut."They are working for Aoun's list because it is the best way to keep control," he said.Several opposition leaders have made similar accusations. Last weekend for example, Samir Franjieh, a breakaway leftist member of the powerful far-right Franjieh clan in northern Lebanon said that Brig. Gen. Mohammed Khallof of Syria was in Tripoli.General Khallof was "addressing threats to some opposition members saying that what happened to journalist Samir Kassir might happen to another person," Mr. Franjieh told supporters, referring to the bombing of a critic of Syria this month.Keeping Mr. Lahoud in office would mean largely preserving the government security services that many Lebanese contend were involved with Syria in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister, in February. That car bombing, which killed 19 other people, incited huge demonstrations here and international pressure, forcing Syria to remove the last of the troops that had been here since early in the civil war in 1976. In the intricate, religion-based politics here, the opposition coalition led by Saad Hariri, Mr. Hariri's son and a Sunni Muslim, and Walid Jumblatt, the Druse chieftain, urged throwing President Lahoud out of office and called for a march on the Presidential Palace last week. But they abandoned the protest at the urging of the Maronite Catholic patriarch, Nasrullah Sfeir.General Aoun has said he favors keeping Mr. Lahoud in office. The Maronite patriarch, who blessed a Christian opposition group, has nonetheless resisted ousting Mr. Lahoud, a Maronite Christian. The president, by the unwritten National Accord, must be a Maronite. Hezbollah leaders also declared last night that the Shiite militia party would not support efforts to cut short Mr. Lahoud's term, which the Lebanese Parliament extended by three years. Western diplomats said that embassies had received reports of Syrian military officers wandering around the country. The diplomats said the situation was compounded by a decade and a half of entanglements between Syrian and Lebanese intelligence agencies. Diplomats have also expressed concern about the possibility of assassination attempts, given Mr. Kassir's fate. None of this surprises Timur Goksel, the former chief adviser to the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon who teaches conflict resolution and Lebanese issues at the American University of Beirut and Notre Dame University here."I didn't expect them to leave anyway," Mr. Goksel said with a shrug. "Give me a break. All these connections with family and money?"