Saturday, April 30, 2011

"... Undermining stability in Lebanon is an easy matter ..."

(AFP)- "Unrest in Syria could spread to neighbouring Lebanon at any moment in light of charges by Damascus that Beirut's Hariri camp is backing anti-regime protesters
"Merely stating that Lebanese parties are interfering in Syrian affairs is equivalent to threatening to destabilise Lebanon, irrespective of whether charges of funding and arming the protesters are accurate," said Ghassan el-Ezzi, professor of political science at the state-run Lebanese University. "This could well be an attempt to transfer the crisis from one country to another," Ezzi told AFP...
"Undermining stability in Lebanon is an easy matter: any dispute here will turn into sectarian strife in which Arab states, Iran, Turkey and Western countries, such as France and the United States, get involved," Ezzi said...
Hezbollah's Al-Manar television also reported that Syrian authorities confiscated drugs, money and arms on seven boats that had been heading from northern Lebanon to the Syrian port city of Latakia. Syria "suspected the boats were tied to the Future Movement," Al-Manar said.
Some analysts say there is no smoke without fire.
"While there is no concrete evidence, I do not think it is a totally far-fetched notion that there is arms and cash smuggling from Lebanon to Syria with the help of Saudi Arabia," said Karim Makdisi, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut..."

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