| In other news, water is wet, but Walid gets points for speaking publicly. |
“In one manner or another, they (Hezbollah) are implicated in certain attacks, if not all,” Jumblatt told Al-Arabiya television late Thursday. “The fog over my eyes dissolved once and for all after the assassination of journalist and MP Gibran Tueni on December 12, 2005,” said the Druze chief, who has previously accused Syria of being involved in the killings.
Six prominent anti-Syrian figures have been slain in the past two years. A UN investigation into the 2005 bomb blast that killed ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri has implicated senior Syrian officials and Lebanese accomplices.
Jumblatt equally accused Hezbollah of fearing an extension of the UN probe into Hariri’s assassination that could cover other bomb and shooting attacks against outspoken Damascus critics. “Hezbollah pulled out of the government saying they were in favour of an international tribunal (in the Hariri slaying) but against any extension of the probe,” Jumblatt said, referring to the resignations of six pro-Syrian ministers, including two from Hezbollah, last month.
“That is because in one way or another, they are implicated in the attacks that killed Tueni, Samir Kassir, Georges Hawi (all in 2005) and Pierre Gemayel (2006) and which targeted journalist May Chidiac and minister Elias Murr (2005),” Jumblatt said.
Echoing an accusation voiced by anti-Syrian Communications Minister Marwan Hamadeh on Thursday, Jumblatt said the “the car bomb that targeted Marwan (on October 1, 2004) was prepared in the southern suburbs of Beirut,” a Hezbollah stronghold. Hariri’s assassination “was prepared high up,” Jumblatt said in an apparent reference to Syria, “but the other crimes, or some of them, took place here” in Lebanon.
“There, I don’t want to say more, but I said it.”