Ingo Radtke, Secretary General of Malteser International, reports from Lebanon:

Saturday/Sunday, November 25/26, 2006

At first glance, Beirut is colourful and bright: Hundreds of yellow and red lights mark the hammocks of the Lebanese capital in the darkness during the landing process. Outside, it is still warm, the customer officers are joking during the checkout. Densely packed, families with flowers and balloons are waiting for relatives or friends. Further back, groups of Indonesian soldiers with the blue UN berets are gathered together and chat. In the streets in front of the 'Rafik Hariri International Airport', the propaganda of the Hezbollah which was sticking to the walls only three months ago has already changed into advertisements for cigarettes.

Then, in the hotel room, Beirut seems to be savage and dangerous. The news channels report alarming facts: the Hezbollah calls for mass demonstrations, the government shall be over-thrown. In turn, the government demands the resignation of the president. The journalists ask whether there will be a new civil war.

The new crisis was caused by the government's approval of the UN vote to constitute an international tribunal in order to investigate the murder of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The assassination of February 14, 2005, was the starting point of a series of assassina-tions which ever since has paralysed the Lebanon and split it into two camps, mostly referred to as 'pro-Syrian' and 'pro-Western' in the newspapers. The Hezbollah seeks to impede the tribunal; together with Shiite and Christian associates they demand a stronger representation in the government.

'The Lebanon is on the verge of war', Paul Saghbini, Director of the Foundation of the Order of Malta in Lebanon, tells us. He describes the uncertainty of the politicians in the aftermath of the latest assassination, that some are worried about their own personal safety. He says that there must not be any more fights. And that so far it seems as if all groups wished to avoid any more violent clashes.

Already now there is enough to do for the Lebanese Association of the Order of Malta. Since the war in summer, the organisation has arranged for three mobile medical teams in the South of Lebanon and for three destroyed health centres becoming operational again. One of these centres, next to the Israeli border, is too damaged to be built up again. Here, the nurses provide for emergency aid in the neighbouring house. For January, it is planned that a new health centre will start running. Furthermore, the Lebanese Association of the Order of Malta has started to repair damaged churches, initially a Maronite one, a Greek-Catholic and an Orthodox one. Only taking into account the South of the country, 18 churches and 160 mosques were hit during the war.

In the afternoon, we leave for the port city of Tyrus in the South of Lebanon, where we spend the night. Arriving at the Shiite outskirts, we recognise an about five metre high portrait of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He is speaking to a crowd, his arms upraised. The hands, modelled, jut out of the picture - they are green, the colour of the Islam. The town, surrounding his over-dimensioned hands, seems to shiver in the face of the conflict accompanying us on the coastal road. Between half-way reconstructed bridges and auxiliary transits there are plenty of portraits of politicians. Most frequently we see: Hassan Nasrallah and Rafik Hariri.

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