March 14 announce new 'national council'

BEIRUT: The March 14 secretariat announced Saturday the creation of a “national council” and a preparation committee to develop the bloc’s new political platform.

“The General Secretary announces the creation of the National Council for March 14 forces,” Fares Soueid, the head of March 14’s secretariat, announced Saturday.

“Every person who attended this conference will be automatically assigned as a member of the council’s general assembly.”

The announcement came after a speech by former Prime Minsiter Fouad Siniora, according to the bloc’s official statement at the group’s annual conference.

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the “Cedar Revolution” movement that ended the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, the conference was held at BIEL, Downtown Beirut.

Soueid announced that a preparation committee has been formed to prepare the new bylaws and political platform for March 14 within a deadline of two months.

The committee’s members included MPs Marwan Hamadeh, Fadi Karam, Joseph Maalouf, Jean Ogassapian, Ahmad Fatfat and other officials and activists from factions affiliated with March 14.

After the end of the conference, Fatfat expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that the committee did not include “even one single woman.”

Soueid responded by saying that a woman named Zeina Mansour volunteered to join the committee as he ended the announcement.

In the official statement read by Siniora, March 14 reiterated the principles on which the coalition was founded and attacked the rival political camp led by Hezbollah.

“The Persian plan wishes to engage the region in a war, by creating a clash between Sunnis and Shiites,” Siniora said.

He accused Iran of causing turmoil in the region for the sake of using it as a chip “on international negotiations tables.”

Siniora slammed Hezbollah for participating in wars outside Lebanon and thus involving Lebanon in regional conflicts, and accused the party of intentionally extending presidential vacuum.

March 14 also denounced the Syrian regime as being the “center of terrorism” in the region and accused it of committing crimes against humanity.

The statement also warned about the increasingly high number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, who have become “a burden and a threat.”

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Syrian Rebels Will Face ISIS, But The U.S. May Not Have Their Backs

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Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish People's Protection Units battle ISIS militants in Kobani, Syria, in November. U.S. officials haven't said whether they will defend the forces if they are attacked by Bashar al-Assad. Jake Simkin/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Jake Simkin/AP

Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish People's Protection Units battle ISIS militants in Kobani, Syria, in November. U.S. officials haven't said whether they will defend the forces if they are attacked by Bashar al-Assad.

Jake Simkin/AP

The U.S. air war in Iraq and Syria against the self-proclaimed Islamic State is now in its eighth month.

American officials say dropping bombs won't be enough to defeat that group; it will also require fighting on the ground. So the U.S. is trying to put together a ground force in Syria by training and equipping thousands of Syrians.

One big question is what the U.S. will do if these Syrian rebel forces get attacked by the regime of Bashar Assad — and so far, the U.S. doesn't have an answer.

When President Obama first talked about training a fighting force in Syria, the idea was to help them battle the Assad regime, not just ISIS.

"I will work with Congress," he said last May at West Point, "to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and brutal dictators."

But by September, when U.S. air strikes began in Syria, the target was ISIS, not Assad's forces. This created an unusual battlefield — American planes targeting a group in Syria's territory, but not Syria's government, raising questions about what would happen to the rebel fighters the U.S. was hoping to train.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel assured Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain at the time that if those fighters were attacked by Assad's forces, they would be protected.

"We will help them and we will support them, as we have trained them," Hagel told McCain.

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"How will we help them?" McCain asked. "Will we repel Bashar Assad's air assets that will be attacking them?"

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"Any attack on those that we have trained who are supporting us, we will help them," Hagel answered.

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This week, asked that same question on Capitol Hill, Ash Carter, the man who replaced Hagel as secretary of defense, had a very different answer.

"My understanding of that question is that we don't foresee that happening anytime soon," Carter said. "But a legal determination, I'm told by the lawyers, has not been made."

What the lawyers decide could depend on what new legal authority Congress gives Obama to fight ISIS. The president has sent Capitol Hill his draft for a new authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee examined that proposal at a hearing this week. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs that panel, sought assurances that it would not leave the Syrian fighters the U.S. is standing up in the lurch.

"I would assume that we would consider it only moral that if we're going to train them in other countries and bring them in, that we would supply air power and other support to protect them, especially from Assad's barrel bombs," Corker said.

"The answer to that is no," answered Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The administration has not added a Syrian regime or an Assad component to the AUMF, although we are in active discussion within the inter-agency about what support we would supply once the new Syrian forces are fielded."

Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks the administration is unresolved on what they want to do.

"I mean, how committed [do] they really want to be for this?" Zenko says. He says the U.S. could find it hard to recruit Syrian fighters in the future if the first to be trained can't rely on America to watch their backs.

"They will be a very attractive target for propaganda purposes by the regime, by ISIS, by other jihadi groups, and the U.S. is now committed to them," he says. "The U.S. reputation then becomes on the line."

The U.S. plans to train 15,000 fighters for the so-called New Syrian Forces over the next three years. The Pentagon tells NPR that training is expected to start early this spring.

Some of those fighters could end up using their training and equipment to fight the Assad regime. For the U.S., protecting them could mean having to knock out Syria's air defenses — and widen the conflict.

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UAE not targeting Lebanese citizens: PM

BEIRUT: UAE’s prime minister assured his Lebanese counterpart Saturday that his country has no official policy of targeting Lebanese citizens, one day after the Gulf government decided to deport 70 families.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Tammam Salam raised the matter with his Emirati counterpart, Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, on the sidelines of an economic conference in Egypt.

According to a statement released by Salam’s office, Maktoum stressed that the “UAE has neither a policy nor an intention to target Lebanese residents.”

Maktoum highlighted the high numbers of Lebanese living in the UAE and their professional successes, the statement said.

“Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid clarified that if measures were taken against some Lebanese, they were certainly based on particular security concerns and do not exceed this limit,” it added.

Around 70 Lebanese citizens were notified by the Lebanese embassies in UAE of the decision to deport them with their families Thursday.

Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil Friday confirmed reports that the UAE had decided to deport the Lebanese individuals, adding that he had contacted his Emirati counterpart in a bid to resolve the matter.

Most of the Lebanese facing deportation are Shiites.

This was the third move of this kind by a Gulf nation in the past six years.

In 2009, dozens of Lebanese Shiites who had lived in the UAE for years were expelled on suspicion of links with Hezbollah.

In 2013, Qatar also expelled 18 Lebanese citizens, after the Gulf Cooperation Council imposed sanctions against Hezbollah for its military intervention in the Syrian war.

Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Bassil had contacted the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and other relevant parties in an attempt to resolve the issue, and had briefed Salam on the discussions. The ministry said Bassil spoke about the issue during Thursday’s Cabinet session, sharing information he had received on the matter. The statement also said that the Foreign Ministry had tried to improve ties between Lebanon and the UAE, as evidenced by the recent reappointment of a Lebanese ambassador to the nation and bilateral discussions on consular, diplomatic and political problems.

Hasan Alayan, the head of a committee representing Lebanese nationals who have been expelled from the UAE in recent years, told The Daily Star Friday that the Lebanese were given 24 to 48 hours to leave the country.

Salam is heading a high-ranking Lebanese business delegation to Egypt.

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