ASSAD AND SYRIAN MOB UNDER NEW UN GUN

First, I was extremely moved by a story by the WaPo’s best “WashingtonPostForeignService” reporter, an intrepid, Arabic-speaking American named Anthony Shadid who reminds us that Saddam was not the only Baathist Chief of State involved in war crimes.

The world screams for justice for Pinochet and the Argentine military who trampled on human rights and were involved in the murder of thousands in Chile and Argentina.

But there has relative silence concerning Syria, because the UN has a whole Group of 77 [or whatever the number is at the moment] who include the Arab League and the African Union and disparate third-world countries all united in what used to be called The North-South Dialogue.

NOW THAT IS CHANGING FOR THE BETTER

As the NYT wire service news says:

United Nations investigators have asked to interview Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad, about the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, wire services reported today.
The United Nations panel asked for similar interviews last summer during the early phase of its investigation, and was rebuffed. But in recent months the panel has issued a report implicating high-level members of the Syrian government, and received new backing from the Security Council, which voted two weeks ago to require Syria to cooperate more thoroughly or face sanctions. The move also comes three days after a former vice president of Syria charged that Mr. Assad had directly threatened Mr. Hariri months before the suicide bombing that killed him and 20 other people last February.

The excellent news also relates that the former vice president, Abdel-Halim Khaddam told Al Arabia television that Mr. Hariri had been summoned to Damascus for a meeting with Mr. Assad.

The Syrian president warned Mr. Hariri "in extremely harsh words" not to interfere with Mr. Assad's plan to extend the term of his Lebanese ally, President Emile Lahoud, Mr. Khaddam said. He quoted the Syrian president as telling Mr. Hariri in 2004: "You want to bring a [new] president in Lebanon. I will not allow that. I will crush whoever attempts to overturn our decision."
The Syrian Parliament responded to the Khaddam interview by voting on Saturday to demand that the government put him on trial for treason, and the ruling Baath party voted yesterday to expel him.
Mr. Khaddam, who fled to exile in Paris last summer, was widely regarded as the architect of Syria's policy in Lebanon under Mr. Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000. His statement represents the first break among the so-called Old Guard who had supported the elder Mr. Assad and still dominate the tight ruling circles in Damascus.

If Khaddam tells where all the bodies are buried, the blunt and stupid son of Hafez will be an international outlaw. The French authorities had better have 24/7 protection around Khaddam or he will explode like Hariri, this time in the streets of the City of Light!

It must be said that Bashar Al-Assad is not the unflinching mass murderer his ruthless father Hafez was before he died and went straight to Hell. But Bashar is several standard deviations lower on the IQ scale.

Finally, the wheels of UN justice grind exceeding SLOW:

two relatives of Mr. Assad who were implicated in a draft report by the panel that was released through a computer error: the president's brother, Maher al-Assad, who commands the presidential guard, and his brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, the head of Military Intelligence.
But Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor who until recently led the investigation, reported to the United Nations last month that his work had been continually blocked by "procedural maneuvering and sometimes contradictory feedback from the Syrian authorities." The United Nations Security Council recently extended the term of the investigative panel by another six months and is expected to name a replacement for Mr. Mehlis

Syria, Iran, Israel, and France and the United States have all been employing the tiny state of Lebanon as rope in a tug of war. As far as I know, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq do not have a dog in that fight, but five ambitious foreign policy heavyweights [even if Syria, Iran and Israel are relatively Light Heavyweights] make the gorgeous country where I spent a great year learning to read and speak Arabic a place where tensions can literally explode at any moment.

More on Lebanon later, as the drama intensifies on the constant crossfire over the Levant and the Baathist Syrian regime continues to escalate.