Lebanon ended weeks of wrangling on Friday and formed a unity government in which Hezbollah and its allies hold effective veto power.
Lebanon’s Parliament is set to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as the country’s president on Sunday, filling a post left vacant for six months by a political crisis that threatened a new civil war. A Qatari-brokered deal last week between rival Lebanese leaders defused 18 months of political stalemate that erupted into fighting this month.
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/ 29 February 2008
The pro-Iranian Hezbollah group accused the United States on Friday of endangering regional stability by deploying a warship off Lebanon and vowed to defy what it called an act of military intimidation. Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, leads a Lebanese opposition locked in a 15-month-old power struggle with the Western-backed governing coalition.
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/ 13 February 2008
Hezbollah military commander Imad Moughniyah was killed by a car bomb in Damascus on Tuesday, the Lebanese group said, announcing the death of the man believed to be behind Western hostage taking in Lebanon in the 1980s. Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, accused Israel of killing Moughniyah, thought to be in his late 40s.
Syria said on Wednesday it would close its border with Lebanon if the United Nations stationed troops along it as part of its mission to enforce a truce between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem made the threat in a meeting with Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja in Helsinki.
Three Lebanese soldiers were killed on Wednesday while clearing unexploded Israeli shells in southern Lebanon, underscoring the dangers of a region awaiting the deployment of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers. The three men were the first Lebanese troops to die since the army began moving south last Thursday.