Robert Fisk: US power games in the Middle East

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Robert Fisk: US power games in the Middle East

As the West looks anxiously at Iraq and Afghanistan, dangerous cracks are opening up in Lebanon ­ and the White House is determined to prop up Fouad Siniora's government
Published: 19 March 2007
The spring rain beat down like ball-bearings on the flat roof of General Claudio Graziano's office. Much of southern Lebanon looked like a sea of mud this week but all was optimism and light for the Italian commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, now 11,000 strong and still expecting South Korea to add to his remarkable 29-nation international army. He didn't recall how the French battalion almost shot down an Israeli jet last year - it was before his time - and he dismissed last month's border shoot-out between Israeli and Lebanese troops.

No specific threats had been directed at Unifil, the UN's man in southern Lebanon insisted - though I noticed he paused for several seconds before replying to my question - and his own force was now augmented by around 9,000 Lebanese troops patrolling on the Lebanese-Israeli frontier. There was some vague talk of "terrorist threats ... associated with al-Qa'ida" - UN generals rarely use the word 'terrorism', but then again Graziano is also a Nato general -- yet nothing hard. Yes, Lebanese army intelligence was keeping him up to date. So it must have come as a shock to the good general when the Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh last week announced that a Lebanese Internal Security Force unit had arrested four Syrian members of a Palestinian "terrorist group" linked to al-Qa'ida and working for the Syrian intelligence services who were said to be responsible for leaving bombs in two Lebanese minibuses on 13 February, killing three civilians and wounding another 20.

Now it has to be said that there's a lot of scepticism about this story. Not because Syria has, inevitably, denied any connection to Lebanese bombings but because in a country that has never in 30 years solved a political murder, it's pretty remarkable that the local Lebanese constabulary can solve this one - and very conveniently so since Mr Sabeh's pro-American government continues to accuse Syria of all things bestial in the state of Lebanon. According to the Lebanese government - one of those anonymous sources so beloved of the press - the arrested men were also planning attacks on Unifil and had maps of the UN's military patrol routes in the south of the country. And a drive along the frontier with Israel shows that the UN is taking no chances. Miles of razor wire and 20ft concrete walls protect many of its units...>

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2371575.ece