Amidst ongoing pro- and anti-Syria protests in Lebanon, Damascus is beginning to call home some units stationed in the country—starting with the intelligence agents [2] in Beirut and Bekaa Valley. Faced with this partial success, Bush has adopted a somewhat softer line on the pro-Syria Hezbollah in recent days, calling for the group to disarm and become a traditional political party—a demand rejected by the organization's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who said [3]: "I'm holding on to the weapons of the resistance because I think the resistance ... is the best formula to protect Lebanon and to deter any Israeli aggression."
Largely unreported in the western press, the anti-Syria protests have also accompanied a wave of anti-Syrian violence—attacks on Syrian-owned shops and the like—which has claimed at least one life in Lebanon since the Feb. 14 car-bomb assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. (Turkish Press [4], March 12) (See our last blog post [5])
