Added sense of urgency

Dec.13, 1007

Added sense of urgency

The despicable killing of Lebanese Brigadier General Francois Al Hajj in Beirut on Wednesday has shot up fears of further destabilisation of the country, which is in the grip of its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Hajj was said to be close to army chief Michel Suleiman and tipped to succeed Suleiman if and when the latter is elected president. That adds to the speculation surrounding his killing.
The Lebanese army is indeed the sole unified and strong national institution that has stayed above the political bickering linked to the presidential election.
Was the murder aimed at demoralising and weakening the Lebanese army? If so, whose purpose is being served?
Or was it aimed at throwing a spanner in the works of ongoing efforts to bring the views of the government and the opposition closer on how to overcome the constitutional dispute over electing the next president.
The assassination could have a different bearing altogether.
Hajj is known to have survived several attempts on his life, starting with a 1976 bid said to have been engineered by Israel after he resisted its efforts to draw him into its orbit.
It is difficult to see any Lebanese group benefiting from Hajj's death. The only party which could be seen as having an interest in eliminating him is Israel, which had found in him a strong nationalist who could prove to be a formidable hurdle in the way of the Jewish state's efforts to realise its objectives in Lebanon after he succeeds Suleiman as the army chief.
Lebanon's Hizbollah group and the Syrian and Iranian governments have condemned the killing. Damascus, no doubt aware that accusing fingers could be pointed at it, moved quickly to quell any such possibility by issuing a strong statement denouncing the murder.
The Syrian position has to be seen in the context of the opening between Washington and Damascus in the wake of the Annapolis meeting on Middle East peace. Surely, the last thing Syria wants at this important juncture in Middle East peacemaking and ending its US-engineerd isolation is to be implicated in destabilisation efforts in Lebanon.
It might take some time before definite clues are offered as to who could have been behind the killing. In the meantime, however, the assassination adds a high sense of urgency to ending the political crisis in the country, because such killings and attempted murders could only contribute to further worsening the state of limbo that would result if Lebanese members of parliament failed to elect a new president on Dec.17.
The priority of the Lebanese MPs today is to bury their differences for the sake of national unity and ensure that they would elect a new president on Dec.17. There might be constitutional hurdles, but then the MPs have the authority and power to overcome them if they are united on one issue — the interests of the country and its people supercede everything else.