Berri: Hezbollah, Future committed to 1701
Hezbollah’s and the Future Movement’s commitment to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 remains steadfast, Speaker...
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
Berri: Hezbollah, Future committed to 1701
Berri: Hezbollah, Future committed to 1701
Hezbollah’s and the Future Movement’s commitment to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 remains steadfast, Speaker...
Girault, Rai to discuss election crisis in Vatican: report
BEIRUT: A top French official will visit the Vatican next week for talks with Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai regarding the Lebanese presidential election crisis, local daily An-Nahar reported Thursday.
The report said French presidential envoy Jean-Francois Girault will head to the Vatican Monday for a meeting with Rai to discuss the election deadlock.
An-Nahar said the French envoy will possibly meet officials of the Holy See for consultations on the presidential crisis.
Lebanon has been without a head of state since May when President Michel Sleiman’s term expired with lawmakers failing to elect a successor due to lack of consensus.
Girault Wednesday held a new round of talks for the second consecutive day with rival Lebanese factions on how to end the political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a president for more than eight months.
The French envoy, however, has apparently failed to make any breakthrough in the presidential crisis following talks with leaders on both sides of the political divide as the March 8 and March 14 parties stood firm on their support for rival candidates.
Sources from both camps agreed that local as well as regional and international factors were blocking the election of a new president.
Comments
Your feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us their views and comments about this article.
Disclaimer: Comments submitted by third parties on this site are the sole responsibility of the individual(s) whose content is submitted. The Daily Star accepts no responsibility for the content of comment(s), including, without limitation, any error, omission or inaccuracy therein. Please note that your email address will NOT appear on the site.
Alert: If you are facing problems with posting comments, please note that you must verify your email with Disqus prior to posting a comment. follow this link to make sure your account meets the requirements. (http://bit.ly/vDisqus)
UN Security Council condemns killing of Spanish peacekeeper
UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday condemned "in the strongest terms" last week's killing of a Spanish peacekeeper in southern Lebanon.
Wednesday's statement comes a week after Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo was killed during the Israeli military's exchange of fire with the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in a disputed border area.
Spain's U.N. ambassador quickly blamed Israel, and a U.N. diplomat has said Israel apologized through several sources, including an apology from its ambassador in Madrid to Spain's foreign minister.
The violence along Lebanon's border, which also killed two Israeli soldiers, was the deadliest escalation on the disputed frontier since the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Israel's ambassador quickly pointed out that the council statement didn't mention the Israeli soldiers or condemn Hezbollah. "The Security Council seems to think that some lives have more value than others," Ron Prosor said in an emailed statement.
A council diplomat said Russia blocked a French-drafted press statement on Tuesday that would have condemned the Hezbollah attack on the Israeli soldiers as a violation of the resolution that ended the 2006 war as well as the death of the Spanish peacekeeper, saying it was "unbalanced."
The blocked statement, supported by Spain and many other council members, also expressed grave concern over the deterioration of the situation along both sides of the so-called Blue Line separating Lebanon and Israel, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions were closed.
Also Wednesday, a senior U.N. official said a U.N. technical investigation on the ground, to determine the facts of what happened in the violence, should be completed in the next three days. The U.N. is also launching a board of inquiry to look into the wider aspects of the incident.
In Detroit, Jeb Bush Makes A Campaign Must-Stop
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at a Economic Club of Detroit meeting in Detroit on Wednesday. The Detroit event is the first in a series of stops that Bush's team is calling his "Right to Rise" tour. That's also the name of the political action committee he formed in December 2014 to allow him to explore a presidential run. Paul Sancya/AP hide caption
itoggle caption Paul Sancya/AP
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at a Economic Club of Detroit meeting in Detroit on Wednesday. The Detroit event is the first in a series of stops that Bush's team is calling his "Right to Rise" tour. That's also the name of the political action committee he formed in December 2014 to allow him to explore a presidential run.
Paul Sancya/AP
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush isn't officially a presidential candidate, but by delivering a speech to the Detroit Economic Club Wednesday he sure acted like one.
The elite, nonpartisan organization is a must-stop for serious candidates — it's hosted every eventual president since Richard Nixon. The list of presidential contenders who've taken to the podium there in recent decades is long. Last year, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was among the speakers.
The club was founded in 1934 during the Great Depression, by prominent Detroit businessman Alan Crow to hold Michigan gubernatorial and senatorial debates and talks by congressional and business leaders.
Its nearly 3,300 members include movers and shakers from Michigan's political and corporate worlds.
Historically, candidates like Jeb Bush have used the forum to outline their economic policies. It was during his 2012 DEC speech that Michigan native Mitt Romney famously listed all the cars he owned, including "a couple of Cadillacs." Romney's father, automaker and former Michigan Gov. George Romney, spoke at the DEC with Nixon in the 1960s.
In 1992, Bill Clinton used the DEC platform for "a major economic address," that criticized President George H.W. Bush. A month later, Bush delivered his own address at the DEC to announce his economic agenda for his second term.
More recently, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in 2007 reprimanded Detroit auto giants from the DEC podium.
"We know that our oil addiction is jeopardizing our national security," he said. "Here in Detroit, three giants of American industry are hemorrhaging jobs and profits as foreign competitors answer the rising global demand for fuel-efficient cars."
"We politicians are afraid to ask the oil and auto industries to do their part and those industries hire armies of lobbyists to make sure that the status quo remains," he said.
Jeb Bush Continues To Test Campaign Waters In Detroit
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at the Detroit Economic Club Wednesday. Paul Sancya/AP hide caption
itoggle caption Paul Sancya/AP
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at the Detroit Economic Club Wednesday.
Paul Sancya/AP
For his first major speech since confirming that he's exploring a presidential run, Jeb Bush chose an interesting location: Detroit.
Speaking to the city's Economic Club, an establishment institution in the Motor City for more than eight decades, he praised the city's emergence from bankruptcy.
"You all are part of a great story — the revival of a city that means so much to all Americans," he told the lunch-time crowd of about 650 people. The mood had brightened significantly in Detroit over the past year. The region's automakers are again selling lots of cars and making money. General Motors announced Wednesday that it earned a net income of $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014.
But the former governor of Florida also pointed to Detroit as a cautionary tale, saying the city's deep and prolonged troubles "are an echo of the troubles facing Washington D.C." And he says he knew how Detroit hit rock-bottom: "Decades of big government policies, petty politics, impossible-to-meet pension promises, chronic mismanagement and broken services — combined with a massive loss of jobs in the auto industry — drove tens of thousands of people from this city and this region."
The core of the speech was the need to create opportunity for those who, as Bush put it, "see only a small portion of the population riding the economy's up escalator."
The sense for the yet-to-be-announced "Jeb Bush for President" campaign is that the message has much more resonance in Detroit than it would in Des Moines, Iowa or Manchester, N.H., where the first contests of 2016 are now just barely a year away.
Other highlights of the Jeb Bush Detroit speech include his reflections on what it means to be the son of a president, and brother of a president, potentially running for president himself:
"On one level, you know, I've had a front row seat to watch history unfold, a unique seat. It's given me some perspectives that are helpful," he said.
"On another level, I know it's an interesting challenge for me. One that, if I have any degree of self-awareness, this would be the place where it might want to be applied. So, if I was to go beyond the consideration of running, I would have to deal with this and turn this fact into an opportunity, to share who I am, to connect on a human level."
Then there was this, on the 2012 GOP primary line-up, which one question from the audience likened to the bar scene from the movie Star Wars. Bush was asked how he anticipated the 2016 Republican primary playing out.
After a hearty laugh, and joke that he'd get in trouble just listening to the question, he answered: "Look, politics is chaotic. ... The idea that there's some smoke-filled room where big dogs, men and women, that have all this power decide who's going to be what, that was gone a long time ago. And as the old order has been disrupted, it's been replaced by a little more of a wild West kind of process."
Finally, Bush was also asked about what has all of a sudden become the hot-button topic of the week in the race for the White House — vaccinations.
Here's the question, and Bush's entire answer from Detroit:
Q: Vaccinations are in the news. Few potential presidential candidates have stumbled on that issue this week. What's your opinion on vaccinations?
Bush: Parents ought to make sure their children are vaccinated. [Applause] Do we need to get any detail with that? I mean, just seems, um, look it's easy, I've done this, I've said things that are misinterpreted or partially interpreted and then heads explode and all sorts of media, you know, just create all this controversy. I think it's better just to say parents have the responsibility to make sure their children are protected, over and out.
So Bush has his first big speech of the year out of the way.
Now we wait, to see when he ventures into Iowa and New Hampshire where voters are anxious to get a glimpse of him in person.
Anti-terror war campaign puts presidency on back burner
BEIRUT: The election of a new president has been put on the back burner for now as the entire world is preoccupied with fighting terrorism, political sources said Wednesday, heralding a prolonged vacuum in the country’s top Christian post.
The sources spoke as French presidential envoy Jean-Francois Girault Wednesday held a new round of talks for the second consecutive day with rival Lebanese factions on how to end the political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a president for more than eight months.
However, Girault has apparently failed to make any breakthrough in the presidential crisis following consultations with leaders on both sides of the political divide as the March 8 and March 14 parties stood firm on their support for rival candidates.
Sources from both camps agreed that local as well as regional and international factors were blocking the election of a successor to former President Michel Sleiman.
Parliament has since April failed in 18 attempts to elect a president due to a lack of quorum as the feuding parties remain at odds over a consensus candidate. A new election session is set for Feb. 18.
“The Lebanese presidential election is not a priority for the international community. So far, there has been no regional or international decision to allow the presidential vote to take place because the whole world is preoccupied with fighting terrorism,” a senior March 8 source told The Daily Star.
The source also cited local factors for the presidential stalemate. “The local players’ conflicting stances on who should be elected president are prolonging the crisis,” the source said.He was referring to Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea, the March 14 coalition-backed candidate for the presidency, in the face of Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, who is supported by Hezbollah and its March 8 allies.
A March 14 source who attended some of Girault’s meetings said the French envoy was not carrying any new ideas to break the presidential deadlock.
“The presidential election is not imminent because the local and regional conditions are still complicated,” the source told The Daily Star.
Locally, the source said Aoun’s “unyielding stance” that either he is elected or there would be no presidential election was an obstructionist factor.
“In addition to this major local obstacle, the regional circumstances are not conducive for the election of a president,” the source said, clearly referring to strained ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Rival Lebanese leaders have argued that a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement is essential to facilitate the election of a president.
Girault, head of the French Foreign Ministry’s Middle East and North Africa Department, met Aoun at the latter’s residence in Rabieh, before holding talks later with former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in the presence of a number of Future bloc lawmakers. He also met with Kataeb Party leader, former President Amine Gemayel.
Girault met MP Walid Jumblatt at a luncheon hosted by the French Ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli at the French Embassy in Beirut.
The French envoy also went to Beirut’s southern suburbs for a meeting with Ammar Musawi, Hezbollah’s international relations officer.
In addition to the situation in Lebanon and the region, Girault and Musawi discussed the presidential election issue and the efforts made by the French official in this respect either during his trips to some regional countries or in his talks with Lebanese officials and political leaders in Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Speaking to reporters after his meeting with Girault, Gemayel said he presented an initiative in an attempt to break the presidential deadlock calling for the nomination of the four top Maronite leaders for the presidency. The four leaders are: Gemayel, Aoun, Geagea and Marada Movement leader MP Sleiman Frangieh.
“The initiative is based on unanimity of the [Lebanese] leaders on the need to elect a strong and capable president,” Gemayel said. “The initiative calls for the nomination of the [four] Maronite leaders for the presidency and for supporting one of them, without closing the door to other candidates in respect of the democratic game.”
Girault, who arrived here Monday night as part of a French initiative aimed at breaking the presidential deadlock, met Tuesday with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Speaker Nabih Berri. This is Girault’s second visit to Lebanon in less than two months as part of a regional tour.
Meanwhile, Berri said the ongoing dialogue between Hezbollah and the Future Movement had won internal and external support.
“There is an internal and external consensus on supporting this [dialogue] approach,” Berri was quoted as saying by MPs during his weekly meeting with lawmakers at his Ain al-Tineh residence.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)