[A-List] Lebanon Opposition to Call General Strike

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011901209.html>
Lebanon opposition to call general strike

By Laila Bassam
Reuters
Friday, January 19, 2007; 5:28 PM

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's opposition will call a general strike
next week, stepping up a campaign to topple the government, a senior
opposition political source said on Friday.

The opposition, which includes Shi'ite Muslim groups Hezbollah and
Amal and Christian leader Michel Aoun, has been demanding veto power
in the government and is now calling for early parliamentary
elections.

"After the failure of political initiatives, the opposition has
decided to escalate its campaign," the source said. "It will call a
comprehensive general strike for Tuesday."

An opposition source said "complete paralysis will afflict the country
including the main, essential, public facilities, among them the port
and the airport."

The strike would come two days before an international donor
conference in Paris which Western-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora
hopes will bring billions of dollars of aid to an economy reeling from
Hezbollah's July-August war with Israel.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group is backed by
Syria and Iran, said the opposition would announce its next step on
Saturday or Sunday but declined to say what it was planning.

"This movement will be very important and very effective and will give
us a strong push," he told al-Manar television. "If it doesn't take us
to the goal, it will strongly bring us closer to this goal," he said.

The opposition has been camped outside Siniora's offices in central
Beirut since December 1 to press its demands for more say in a
government which Hezbollah says is controlled by the United States.

Siniora has resisted the opposition demands and instead pressed on
with plans for the Paris conference, which U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice plans to attend.

"PARALYSIS IN GOVERNMENT"

The opposition says Siniora's cabinet was stripped of legitimacy by
the resignation of all its Shi'ite Muslim ministers in November when
talks over expanding the government collapsed.

"The whole world will find that the current unconstitutional
government cannot govern Lebanon," Nasrallah said.

"There is paralysis in government in Lebanon. The president of the
republic says this government is unconstitutional and so will not sign
its decrees," he said.

"The head of parliament says this government is unconstitutional. How
can the country be governed?"

Lebanese government posts are divided among the country's array of
religious communities.

Saad al-Hariri, the son and political heir of Rafik al-Hariri and
Lebanon's most powerful Sunni Muslim leader, backs the government. The
crisis has raised sectarian tensions, especially between Sunnis and
Shi'ites who back the rival camps.

Hezbollah says ruling politicians have whipped up sectarian passions
to defend themselves from the opposition challenge.

The politicians who control government claim the opposition is trying
to mount what they call a coup that would allow more Syrian and
Iranian influence.

Syrian troops were forced out of Lebanon in 2005 by international
pressure and mass protests triggered by the assassination of former
prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose killing many Lebanese blamed on
Damascus.

Syria denies involvement. The establishment of an international
tribunal to try suspects in the killing has been a priority for the
anti-Syrian cabinet which came to office after the Syrian withdrawal.

The leaders who control government claim the opposition is trying to
derail the tribunal to defend Damascus, although the main opposition
forces have said they support the idea of the tribunal but want to
discuss the details.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Nadim Ladki)
--
Yoshie
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