Annan urges Lebanon talks in hope of ending crisis
Source: Reuters
By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday urged Lebanon's Western-backed government to return to talks with Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian opposition members in search of a deal offering a way out of the country's current crisis. With a little over three weeks left until he steps down as U.N. leader, Annan remained "very concerned" about the situation in Lebanon "and would renew his call for all the political parties, both the opposition and the government, to return to the table and find a political solution to the current impasse," said his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. Annan steps down at the end of the month, to be succeeded by South Korean Ban Ki-moon. Dujarric spoke with reporters after the French daily Le Monde reported that a senior U.N. official in Lebanon had warned U.N. headquarters of an alleged plot by militants with ties to al Qaeda to sneak into the country to assassinate anti-Syrian leaders. The spokesman said he could neither confirm nor deny the report but added that Annan was watching developments in Lebanon "extremely closely." Lebanon has been shaken by a wave of political assassinations and other attacks targeting anti-Syrian politicians, journalists and others, starting with the February 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Thousands of opposition followers have been camped out for the past week in squares near government headquarters in central Beirut to try to topple anti-Syrian Prime Minister Fouad Siniora from power. CODED CABLE TO HEADQUARTERS The protests began after talks aimed at giving Hezbollah a greater voice in the government fell apart without a deal. Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday to press ahead with his campaign to oust the government but promised his powerful Shi'ite Muslim group would not spark a fresh civil war. Le Monde said a top U.N. official had been told of the assassination plot by Abbas Zaki, the Palestinian Liberation Organization representative in Lebanon, who said some 50 militants calling themselves "Fatah Al-Islam" had entered Lebanon to assassinate 36 anti-Syrian figures. PLO security agents later confronted the group and arrested six of them, releasing four and turning a Syrian and a Saudi Arabian over to the Lebanese military, the newspaper said. The official informed headquarters of the allegations in a top-priority coded cable sent directly to U.N. Political Affairs head Ibrahim Gambari, U.N. officials said, confirming the newspaper's account. The U.N. officials added that headquarters received another cable from its mission in Lebanon three weeks ago, warning of a threat against U.N. facilities from an al Qaeda-related group. The allegations of an assassination plot first appeared in Beirut's al-Mustaqbal newspaper, owned by Hariri's son, Saad, the leader of the anti-Syrian coalition. Security sources said the Fatah group's offices have now been closed and its members restricted to a refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The group's background and goals have been exaggerated, they said. In New York, French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere on Thursday asked the Security Council to adopt a statement extending "its full support for the legitimate and democratically elected government of Lebanon." The statement would also condemn any unlawful effort to topple the government or "intervene in Lebanon's internal affairs," according to a copy of the text obtained by Reuters.
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