Powered by WebAds

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Obama-Kerry making nookie nookie with Hezbullah?

A gutten zummer - a good summer to all of you, and a reminder that here in Israel, the holiday is only one day for those of us who live here permanently and that's why I'm back online tonight.

US Secretary of State John FN Kerry, fresh from cozying up to the Hamas-Fatah unity government, is on a surprise trip to Lebanon where he may be making nookie nookie with Hezbullah.
A senior US official traveling with Kerry said that in addition to discussing the refugee issue with Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, the secretary would also press them to deal with the political crisis that has left the country without a president since last month.
Lebanon requires a “fully functioning” presidency in order to cope with tremendous challenges it faces, the official said, adding that although Washington has no favored candidate, the US would like to see a new president in office as soon as possible.
...
Michel Suleiman’s six-year term ended last month but Lebanese politicians have not been able to agree on a successor. Five parliament sessions over several weeks have failed to elect a president because lawmakers allied with the militant Hezbollah group boycotted the meetings.
Lebanon is accustomed to political crisis. It went for months without a president before Suleiman, a former army commander, was elected in 2008.
The absence of a president is chiefly a setback for Lebanon’s Christian community, whose influence has significantly waned since the country’s 1975-90 war. It also erodes fragile institutions that keep the country of several Christian and Muslim sects together.
Under Lebanon’s power-sharing system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the parliament speaker a Shiite Muslim.
For a parliament to elect the president, a two-thirds quorum — or 85 of the legislature’s 128 members — is needed, but none of the sessions to choose Suleiman’s successor met that requirement.
Consensus has been near impossible. The Shiite group Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, while most Lebanese Sunnis broadly support the armed uprising to overturn his rule.
Although he was elected six years ago as a consensus president, Suleiman became a harsh critic of Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria and has called on the group’s fighters to withdraw from the neighboring country.
Oh well, I guess he'll have to talk to Hezbullah to resolve this.... Maybe he'll visit Assad next.

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Google