Lebanon gets president after six-month wait

Lebanon gets president after six-month wait

By Ferry Biedermann in Beirut

Published: May 25 2008 11:34 | Last updated: May 25 2008 19:32

Newly elected President Michel Suleiman

Lebanon’s parliament on Sunday confirmed Michel Suleiman, army commander, as president amid scenes of jubilation in a country that was on the brink of civil war just over a week ago.

The result of the vote was greeted with fireworks and celebratory gunfire across the capital, as many Lebanese hoped they had reached the end of an 18-month political stand-off.

Security was tight around parliament in downtown Beirut, where dignitaries from around the world attended the ceremony and signalled their backing for an Arab-brokered peace deal between the country’s rival factions – agreed in Doha last week – that made the vote possible.

The president’s post had been vacant for six months amid an extended political crisis.

In his inaugural address, Gen Suleiman called for reconciliation and national unity but also sent a pointed warning to the country’s politicians: “Do not turn our country into an arena for the wars of others.” At the same time he reached out to both sides of the political divide – the western-backed government, and the opposition led by the pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian Hizbollah movement.

But he did seem to caution Hizbollah, which says it retains weapons for its confrontations with Israel but which earlier this month used them against other Lebanese factions. Resistance and its achievements should not be used in “internal struggles,” said Gen Suleiman.

In a rare show of unity, regional and international rivals normally at odds over Lebanon attended the ceremony.

The foreign ministers of both Iran and Syria rubbed shoulders with backers of the pro-western government, including the US, which sent a congressional delegation, France, represented by foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, and Saudi Arabia.

It was the first time that a Syrian foreign minister had visited Lebanon since Damascus withdrew its troops in 2005, sparking hopes of better relations between the two countries.

Gen Suleiman is seen as acceptable to Syria, the former military power in Lebanon, as well as to the anti-Syrian majority. However, he was not the first choice of either side. Under the country’s sectarian power-sharing formula, the president has to be a Maronite Christian.

The compromise reached in Qatar last week, under which Gen Suleiman was elected, includes a big concession on the part of the government’s parliamentary majority. It had to agree to the opposition’s original demand for veto power in a national unity government.

Gen Suleiman will start consultations on Monday on a new prime minister, who will then be charged with forming a cabinet. Despite the show of unity and the relief in Lebanon at the easing of the crisis, many analysts have warned that the core problems that led to the confrontation have not been solved by the accord in Qatar.

Hizbollah’s arms remain a topic of friction and neither the weakness of Lebanon’s institutions nor the discrepancies in its sectarian power-sharing system have been addressed.

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Profile: General Michel Suleiman

By Ferry Biedermann in Beirut

Published: May 25 2008 15:56 | Last updated: May 25 2008 15:56

General Michel Suleiman, the army commander who was on Sunday confirmed as Lebanon’s 12th president, is the only candidate that the western-backed parliamentary majority and the Hizbollah-led opposition could both agree on.

His election comes after six months of political bickering that left the presidency vacant and spilled over into violent conflict, pushing leading Arab states to broker urgently an agreement to pull the country from the brink of war.

His main challenge will be to restore the damaged image of the presidency and, more importantly, to try to bridge the lingering divide between the two main political blocs and make the deal reached in the Qatari capital of Doha stick.

Acknowledging the difficulty of that task, he issued an appeal for unity on the eve of his election. “I cannot save the country alone. This mission requires the efforts of all,” he was quoted as saying in Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper.

Gen Suleiman is a Maronite Christian, which is a prerequisite for filling both the post of army commander and of president under the country’s sectarian power sharing arrangement.

He was born in 1948, only a few years after Lebanon gained independence, near the seaside town of Byblos, north of Beirut. His appointment as army chief was one of the first acts of Emile Lahoud, the previous, pro-Syrian president, when he came to power in 1998.

The two men came from a similar background, and Damascus, which controlled Lebanon at the time, had a decisive say in their appointments. This made the governing coalition – which took over after Syrian troops were forced out of the country in 2005 and desperately tried to get rid of Mr Lahoud – deeply suspicious at first of Gen Suleiman’s intentions.

But there is some evidence that General Suleiman is cut from a different cloth. Under him, the army allowed massive anti-Syrian demonstrations to take place after the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, the trigger for the subsequent Syrian withdrawal. He also kept the army’s relations with the new anti-Syrian government at least outwardly cordial.

At the same time, however, the army essentially stood by earlier this month when Hizbollah, the Shia militant group, and its allies took over Sunni strongholds in west Beirut, highlighting the army’s weakness and raising doubts about its chief among pro-government politicians.

But Mr Suleiman’s main focus as commander has been to preserve the unity of the armed forces, whose make-up reflects the country’s sectarian divisions, and this has forced him into a delicate balancing act.

In this month’s violence his attitude appears to have been driven by the conviction that unity remains fragile and cannot be put to the test through any confrontation with domestic political groups, not least the powerful and strongly-armed Hizbollah.

Earlier in the year, it was the opposition who had severely criticised the army’s performance during riots over power cuts in Shia areas of the capital. Soldiers killed at least eight opposition members at the time in an incident that was seen as endangering Gen Suleiman’s chances of becoming president. Some pro-government politicians indeed suspect that Hizbollah only signed off on the general’s appointment as army chief after he proved, in the recent clashes, that he was not a threat to the group.

As the new president, Gen Suleiman is expected to lead talks on Hizbollah’s arms, which the group wants to retain but which other factions see as a threat. Indicating his intention to pursue a consensus, he said last week: “Security is not achieved with muscles, but joint political will.”

Despite the reluctance to engage in domestic feuds, the army under Gen Suleiman can count some achievements since the anti-Syrian government of Fouad Siniora, the outgoing prime minister, took over. He oversaw the deployment of the army to the south of Lebanon in accordance with UN security council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah.

It was the first time in more than 30 years that the army had operated on the Israeli border and it meant being present in the heartland of the heavily-armed Hizbollah movement. Fully recognising the balance of power, however, Gen Suleiman made it clear that his soldiers were not there to confront or disarm the Shia movement.

Meanwhile, last year the general ordered a major Lebanese army offensive when his forces laid siege to Sunni Islamist militants in the northern Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared. The assault was launched after radicals from Fatah al-Islam, who many say were originally supported by Syria, ambushed and slaughtered dozens of army soldiers.

The offensive, which lasted three months, improved the standing of the military as the guarantor of country’s security and increased Gen Suleiman’s popularity. Until then, Lebanon’s security forces had largely been seen as ineffective, having been unable to prevent the wave of destabilising violence that has hit Lebanon since 2005.

The general, however, has his work cut out as a divided country implements the Arab-brokered power-sharing agreement. One of the first potential flash points Gen Suleiman may have to deal with as president is managing his own succession as army commander. Both political camps will try to place one of their own in the position, particularly as it has been a stepping stone to the presidency. So sensitive is the post that one of the favourites to succeed him – Brigadier-General Francois el-Hajj – was assassinated in a car bombing in December last year.