In a letter to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora French President Jacques Chirac Tuesday expressed his horror at a bombing that killed three people near Bikfaya in the Metn region of Mount Lebanon. "I am horrified and dismayed at the appalling attacks that took place this morning in Bikfaya. I condemn them in the clearest terms," Chirac wrote. "By striking on the eve of the commemoration of the attack that claimed the lives of Rafiq Hariri and his companions, these murderers are trying to plunge the whole of Lebanon back into violence."Jacques may be horrified, but he's not really going to do anything about it that doesn't require sending forth the striped pants brigade.
Bomb blasts tore through two buses in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing three people as the deeply divided nation prepared to commemorate Hariri's murder two years ago. The bombings in a mainly Christian area northeast of Beirut were the latest in a spate of attacks that have been blamed on Lebanon's former powerbroker Syria and came at a time of high political tensions in Lebanon.
According to the French presidency, Chirac also spoke with the head of Lebanon's influential Maronite council of bishops, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, to express his condolences. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy warned that those responsible for the "hateful and cowardly attack", "and for those of the past two years, will be made to answer for their crimes."