Washington Post: Jumblat calls US to do in Syria what it did in Iraq
Lebanon-Syria-USA, Politics, 1/6/2006

A Washington Post columnist reported in an opinion piece yesterday that Walid Jumblat told him in a telephone interview, when asked what he wanted from America "You came to Iraq and you can do the same thing in Syria."

The piece was written by David Ignatius, who opened up by referring to gangster movies. He spoke first of the television interview by former Syrian vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam, whom he called an old mafia don saying "In the gangster movies, you know all hell is about to break loose when one of the disgruntled old dons decides to switch sides and rat out the young Godfather. Something like that is now happening with Syria," then turned his attention to Jumblatt.

To understand the latest turns of the screw in Syria and Lebanon, Ignatius wrote, I spoke by telephone yesterday with Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze community and something of a warlord himself.

Ignatius added: The Druze leader is holed up in his ancestral fortress of Moukhtara, in the Chouf Mountains. Like other Lebanese I spoke with this week, he fears a deadly new attack by the Syrians that would attempt to trigger sectarian conflict in Lebanon -- and take the heat off Damascus. Jumblatt argues that the only stable outcome will be regime change in Syria -- a "Milosevic solution" that will bring Assad to justice through the United Nations.

What makes the Syria-Lebanon situation especially volatile, Jumblatt explained to Ignatius, is that it is linked to the radical new Iranian regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Jumblatt argued that Iran is using its alliance with al-Assad and Hizbullah in its larger strategic battles against Israel and the United States. "It's as if we are defending Iranian nuclear facilities from the border of Lebanon," he said.

Jumblat said "If Bush considers Lebanon one of his major achievements, now is the time to protect Lebanon," He told Ignatius: What can the United States do, realistically, to keep the Syria-Lebanon situation from exploding? The answer partly is to stick with the UN investigation that is slowly wrenching out the truth about Hariri's murder. The challenge for the United States, said Jumblat, is to help Lebanon become strong enough to resist Syrian hegemony. A potential breakthrough would be a US-brokered agreement for Israeli withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms area along the Lebanon border, under a UN agreement that the territory belongs to Lebanon. That would give the struggling Lebanese government a symbolic victory -- and would undercut Hezbollah's rationale for maintaining its militia. That issue should be at the top of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's in-box as she starts the new year -- perhaps along with an old tape of "The Godfather."

Previous Stories:
  Straw calls on Syria to establish formal relations with Lebanon   (1/5/2006)
  Damascus agrees Sharaa to be interrogated by UN committee   (1/5/2006)
  Damascus criticizes escalated US pressure   (1/5/2006)
  US calls Syria to collaborate with UN investigation   (1/3/2006)
  BBC profile: Abdul Halim Khaddam indicate disagreement inside Syrian leadership   (1/2/2006)
  Baath leadership expels Khaddam for his remarks   (1/2/2006)
  Al-Arabia: Syrian Vice President denounces government: al-Assad threatened Hariri before his assassination   (12/31/2005)
  Junblat accuses Syria of instigating militia attack on Israel   (12/30/2005)
  Tension between Hizbullah and Junblat   (12/27/2005)

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