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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Debka: Assad Panics. Syrian Regime Targeted for Extinction?
2005-08-31
A second wave of arrests of Lebanese security officials was made overnight Tuesday Aug. 30 on the orders of the UN team investigating the Rafik Hariri assassination headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. French sources report these officials had access to the weapons the former Lebanese prime minister’s assassins used after they blew up his motorcade last February.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report the Assad regime is in a panic as the UN team’s findings on the murder case come closer to Damascus. In Beirut, the specter of civil war hovers as Syrian agents and Hizballah officers are seen handing out weapons to Muslims – the first sign that Assad has decided to react to the threat closing in on him by igniting fresh civil bloodshed.

Warnings from French intelligence to were conveyed to Lebanese leaders in the last 24 hours to get out of Beirut and take temporary refuge in Paris. “Big events are in the making,” they said. Most Lebanese cabinet ministers, bankers, public figures and newspaper editors accepted the offer. They and Saad Hariri, leader of the ruling party with his family, fled to the French capital.
Tough to run a country from Paris, though the food is probably better.
The sense in Washington and Paris is that both governments are resolved to bring the Assad regime to an end. Our sources add that the Mehlis probe achieved its second breakthrough when a number of defectors from Syrian and Lebanese security and intelligence services from the time Damascus dominated the country also reached Paris this week. They handed French intelligence incriminating materials and testimony on the part played by the Syrian president and Lebanese president Emil Lahoud in the Hariri murder. A high-ranking French intelligence official told DEBKAfile Wednesday that this evidence and the defectors’ willingness to testify against both presidents provides grounds for international arrest warrants against them.

Also Wednesday, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice interrupted her vacation for a conference with Terje Roed Larsen, the UN secretary’s Middle East envoy who updated her on the latest turn in the Hariri inquiry. The European Union’s external affairs executive Javier Solana, currently visiting Israel was on the point of traveling to Beirut but changed his mind.
Posted by:PlanetDan

#8  If Assad goes, who takes over? Would the Baathists remain in power, and if not, what group would dominate Syria?

Three guesses, but you'll only need one.
Posted by: badanov   2005-08-31 23:54  

#7  If Assad goes, who takes over? Would the Baathists remain in power, and if not, what group would dominate Syria?
Posted by: Chuck   2005-08-31 20:57  

#6  This is going to get real nasty.Seems like a good time to put paid to past accounts.
Posted by: raptor   2005-08-31 18:42  

#5  Lebanon Daily Star confirms several Lebanese politicians have gone to Paris out of fear of assasination.
Posted by: liberalhawk   2005-08-31 15:48  

#4  Hey, things are looking up. The US and French agree upon something: that the Syrian Kleptocracy are a$$sholes and need the boot. Something to build upon, heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2005-08-31 14:43  

#3  Could the Security Council be convinced to back an invasion to enforce an international warrant if the French were behind it? Stranger things have happened, but not much stranger.
Posted by: Jonathan   2005-08-31 14:32  

#2  Normally I would file this in the until 2nded file but I saw this earlier and it makes me rethink what I thought then. When I read this story I thought a little wierd but hmmmm.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=18108

The article sounds like some equipment marines and wouldnt be to much to assume now after this that some of those marines are very likley Seals moving to protect the democratic Lebaneese and the christians from Hezbollah and thier Iranian/Syrian support. JDAM anyone. I also saw awhile back a article on the Leboneese Christians makeing a major weapons purchace in from France. I hope that was true sounds like it is going to be needed.
Posted by: C-Low   2005-08-31 12:52  

#1  Um, the new Lebanese cabinet has fled for Paris in fear of Syrian-armed assassination squads? I'd call that "burying the lede".
Posted by: Mitch H.   2005-08-31 11:56  

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