BEIRUT: Standing outside the Grand Serail in January 2004, late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri leaned on the shoulder of his longtime friend and political ally Fouad Siniora and began to sob. Hariri seldom spoke about the disastrous meeting he had with Syrian President Bashar Assad and three top Syrian intelligence operatives the previous month but that day he indulged the catharsis.
“He [Hariri] told me ‘I will never forget so long as I live the humiliation and the insults directed to me by President Bashar Assad in the presence of his three officers,’” Siniora told the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on the first day of his testimony Monday.
Siniora never asked Hariri exactly what was said at that meeting, and the late prime minister never shared. His tears, however, told a story of unexpected indignity.
Siniora, who would become prime minister in 2005 after Hariri’s assassination, said that while Hariri had maintained a civil relationship with deceased Syrian President Hafez Assad, his relationship with Damascus soured when the younger Assad assumed the presidency in 2000.
While Hariri often argued with Hafez Assad, he at least felt “somebody was appreciating what he was saying,” Siniora told the court. “This is not what I used to get as an impression when Prime Minister Hariri used to talk about his relationship with Bashar Assad,” he added.
Through dialogue with Hafez Assad, Hariri was often able to execute reforms in Lebanon, Siniora said. After 2000, however, the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon stymied Hariri’s efforts to reform Lebanese institutions. Improvements in Lebanon’s education system, electrical grid, telecommunications networks and civil aviation industry were not properly implemented because of “the fears of the Syrian regime that any reform would lead to more openness, to more freedoms,” according to Siniora.
Siniora is the most senior politician to testify at the United Nations-backed STL to date. A number of Hariri’s allies and confidantes have appeared at the court in recent months to discuss the political context in Lebanon leading to the former prime minister’s assassination in February 2005.While Siniora decried in vague terms those who obstructed Hariri’s “reformist” vision, he broke ranks with other March 14 politicians who have testified before the STL by refusing to name specific individuals involved in the so-called Lebanese-Syrian security apparatus.
Siniora, who heads the Hariri’s Future Movement parliamentary bloc, may have been trying to avoid any renewed friction with Hezbollah as the two groups are engaged in a tenuous and ongoing political dialogue.
Although the court has charged five Hezbollah members with plotting the bomb which killed Hariri and 21 others in 2005, Siniora made no mention of the party in his testimony Monday.
When pressed to name other members of the “Syrian-Lebanese security system” he referenced repeatedly throughout his testimony, Siniora was decidedly reserved. “I do not like to name names,” he said. “I will be unfair toward one or two people if I name them and leave out hundreds of other people.”
Moreover, while several other March 14 politicians who have testified before the court said that Hariri understood the attempted assassination of MP Marwan Hamade as a message from the Syrian regime, Siniora refused to implicate Damascus in the incident. “I cannot identify ... who put his finger on the detonator,” Siniora said.
Among the few exceptions to Siniora’s conspicuous silence was former President Emile Lahoud. “President Lahoud always thought and believed that Prime Minister Hariri had a hidden agenda,” Siniora said. “This is something that reflects his lack of vision.”
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