Wednesday, March 16, 2005

News Items: Bahia, Jumblatt, Karami, Sfeir

Three interesting news items as of today morning (U.S. Eastern time):

  1. MP Bahia Hariri was chosen by the Hariri family and the Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal Parliamentary bloc to take over Rafiq Hariri's leadership. She's definitely taking the helm of the Prime Minister position after Karami fails to create a national coalition government. And I will be the first to welcome such an honorable move.
  2. PM Karami announced the cancellation of the Tripoli demonstration that was scheduled for this upcoming Friday, after its postponement from last week.
  3. MP Walid Jumblatt has suspended dialogue with Hizbullah after being branded as a Jewish Rabbi in the Nabatieh demonstration that took place last Sunday.

In less than an hour, a press release will be held in the White House between President Bush and Patriarch Sfeir. I believe that the Opposition, including two individuals whom I call "bridges"--namely MP Bahia Hariri and MP Mohsen Dalloul--have taken their best shot at attempting to build a bridge with Hizbullah. I am anxiously awaiting Sfeir's remarks to see whether he puts the ultimate seal on that attempt...If all goes well, then the ball will be clearly this time in Hizbullah's court and so they can play the waiting game no more...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Just a clarification regarding Junblatt suspending dialogue with Hizballah. This was reported by Arabiya only and they admitted that they needed to clarify it. In fact, Junblatt threatened to suspend dialogue with Hizballah unless the militia (or whatever you want to call them) 'clarifies' what it meant. Tonight Nasrallah is expected to apologise to Junblatt in an interview on Manar.

Raja said...

thanks a lot Amal! Doha, Reem May and I are trying our best to keep up the effort despite the usual time constraints and commitments.