Lebanon Is Poised To Play A Bigger Regional Role With Implications For Neighbours.

*** Saudi Arabia & UAE Are To Fund The Lebanese Army's Upgrading And Modernisation So That It Can Become The Only Armed Force In A Country With 18 Different Sects

*** Iran, Transiting From Clientelism To Militarism, Consists Of Thousands Of Mini-States And Some Of Them Have Their Own Armies; There Are More Than 200 Illegal Ports In Iran; Over 60% Of Iran's Foreign Trade Is Controlled By The Mini-States

*** Ayt. Mesbah-Yazdi Rules Over An Expanding Empire; Ayt. Boroujerdi Was Arrested On Oct. 8 Because He Was Too Loud In Denouncing The Theocracy; But Imam Khomeini's Grandson In Qom Keeps Saying The Same Thing, Though Tehran Wouldn't Dare Touch The Latter

BEIRUT - With Iran heading an alliance which the Bush administration calls "axis of evil", which includes North Korea, Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab initiative for peace in Lebanon and Iraq. The Arab move, including Egypt, Jordan and the six-state Arab Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), has the full support of the US, the EU and the rest of the OECD; it will enable Beirut to play a bigger role internationally.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured the Middle East on Oct. 2-6, including a visit to Iraq on Oct. 5-6. In Jeddah, Ms Rice reached agreement with Saudi King Abdullah ibn Abdul-Aziz that the kingdom will play the leading role in parallel initiatives for peace in Iraq and Lebanon.

There is to be a reconciliation conference in Makkah on Oct. 19-20 for Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite religious leaders to be convened by the Jeddah-based Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). For Lebanon there is to be a new round of dialogue between the heads of the main communities. This is to be under the auspices of Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who visited Saudi Arabia and on Oct. 8-9 held talks with King Abdullah and his half-brother, Crown Prince Sultan ibn Abdul-Aziz.

Ms Rice visited Erbil, northern Iraq, on Oct. 6 and had talks with Kurdistan President Mas'oud Barzani, urging the latter to work on Iraq's unity and fair sharing of Iraq's petroleum wealth among all the Iraqis. In Saudi Arabia on Oct. 3, Ms Rice said failing to win Iranian agreement on suspension of uranium enrichment left the UNSC with sanctions as the only choice.

There is a crisis of confidence between the Muslim world and people of other faiths. It is a cultural problem centred on the concept of honesty. In turn, Sunni Arab states have a crisis of confidence with the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran and its radical branches which are spread among Shi'ite communities in the Muslim world. The crisis is leading to a confrontation between the rulers of the Sunni Arab status quo and the axis of players led by Iran; both have a problem with the meaning of honesty. None of the Sunni rulers or religious leaders has come out with a clear condemnation of the Neo-Salafi project to establish a caliphate to rule the whole world (see news15-Arab-Iran-HonestyOct9-06).

In Iraq the US, with a troubled military presence also in Afghanistan, is learning things more valuable than the country's petroleum wealth and this will have major implications for OPEC (see ood4-IraqOPECsyrIranOct16-06).

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad  told the BBC on Oct. 9 the US had no willingness or vision for a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arabs. He said Syria wanted to negotiate peace with Israel. But in the absence of a neutral mediator between Israel and Syria, he said, the chances of peace in the Middle East were slim. Assad repeated hints which implied that his regime still depended on the Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite organisation in Lebanon, Hizbullah, to keep having a proxy war against Israel in the south of the country.

In an interview with Kuwait's al-Anba' daily published on Oct. 8, Assad said a war with Israel could not be ruled out as long as a lasting peace in the Middle East was not achieved. He said: "In principle, we [always] expect that there will be an Israeli aggression at any time. We all know that Israel is militarily powerful and is backed directly by the US. We can't debate whether to be prepared or unprepared. We must remain always prepared".

The Syrian president - a Ba'thist dictator who inherited his "Alawite family's throne" in mid-2000, after his father Gen. Hafez al-Assad  died - said Israel had abandoned the Middle East peace process since Ariel Sharon came to power in 2001.

Assad added: "This means that there will be no peace in the foreseeable future. If there is no peace, naturally you should expect that war may come. The no-war, no-peace situation means there will either be peace or war". Assad warned that, without Syria being involved in any peace process, there will be no peace or security in any part of the Middle East. In this Assad implied that the Iran-led axis was out to keep the Middle East unstable for as long as Iran and Syria were isolated internationally and regionally.

Syria had been on alert for an Israeli attack during the Jewish state's 34-day offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon which ended on Aug. 14. Peace talks between Syria and Israel have been frozen since late March 2000 - when Gen. Hafez al-Assad was told abruptly that a special meeting he had in Geneva with then US President Bill Clinton and then Israeli PM Ehud Barak - ended inconclusively. The elder Assad was not only demanding that Israel hand over the whole of the Golan Heights, which it had occupied since the six-day Arab-Israeli war in June 1967 and annexed to the Jewish state in the early 1980s, but also wanted to keep Lebanon under Syrian control. Assad died suddenly on June 10, 2000, weeks after Israel had withdrawn its forces from south Lebanon. Israel's withdrawal was meant for Syria, too, to pull its troops and secret agents from Lebanon - which the younger Assad was forced to do in late April 2005. But Assad's regime by then had been implicated in the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri.

The younger Assad, whose regime has depended on the use of Lebanon and Hizbullah for his proxy war with Israel, on Aug. 15 vowed he will see the current Lebanese government and pro-Hariri forces gone before long. Assad on Oct. 8 told al-Anba': "One must defend one's country fiercely" - citing Hizbullah's "resistance" to the Israeli offensive in Lebanon launched on July 12, when the Iran-sponsored Shi'ite group captured two Israeli soldiers. AFP on Oct. 9 quoted a "political adviser" to Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz as saying Israel must take Assad's comments about the possibility of war seriously. Reserve Gen. Amos Gilad told army radio: "It is necessary to carefully study such menacing declarations".

Assad's calls for peace talks have stirred an Israeli debate. But while some politicians and commentators suggest Damascus' "charm offensive" should not be rejected out of hand, the government says Syria must end support for Hizbullah and radical Palestinian groups if it wants to revive negotiations. Syria on Oct. 12 dismissed an invitation by Israel's veteran statesman and Vice-PM Shimon Peres for Assad to visit Jerusalem. Assad immediately dismissed such a possibility.

Assad believes Syria had emerged reinvigorated from the war in Lebanon in which Hizbullah put up a strong fight against Israeli forces. He believes he can restart peace talks on his own terms. The only deal he would accept is a full return of the Golan Heights. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, however, is not strong enough to cede the Heights to a dictator whose regime is facing serious internal and external problems.

Gershon Baskin, head of an institute which promotes Arab-Israeli dialogue, wrote in the Jerusalem Post saying Israel was wrong to set conditions for negotiations with its neighbours, adding: "These preconditions do nothing but close the door to dialogue and paint a picture of an Israel that is not really interested in peace". Gilad Sher, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said: "Israel must not reject Assad's hints outright but, rather, it must begin a cautious, measured and pragmatic process in which Assad's willingness is analysed".

The Olmert government was undermined by Israel's poor performance in the war with Hizbullah and is suffering from a policy vacuum on both the domestic and external fronts. Talks with Syria could provide a new agenda, particularly if peace negotiations with the Palestinians are not restarted. Israel on Oct. 14 appeared on the verge of re-invading the Gaza Strip in a determined war against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all other groups backed by Iran.

The official government view in Israel is that Assad is promoting himself as a peacemaker in order to break out of his diplomatic isolation in both the region and the world. Officials noted his was the only state to have a strategic alliance with Iran and to support groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas. The FT on Oct. 13 quoted an Israeli official as saying of Assad: "He's trying to get out of his isolation the cheap way".

Despite Assad's belief that Syria is stronger after the war in Lebanon, there had been no improvement in his relations with regional states or with European governments which believe the Ba'thist regime was behind the 2005 assassination of Hariri. Assad might have misread the signals coming from Israel immediately after the Lebanon war, including statements from some ministers that the Israeli government might be ready for negotiations with Damascus.

In Lebanon the government of Fou'ad Siniora had become a key partner of the US-led alliance. This was cemented further by an agreement in Saudi Arabia between King Abdullah ibn Abdul-Aziz and visiting Speaker Berri for Lebanon to cease being a battlefield for Syria's and Iran's proxy wars against Israel and the US. This will enable Beirut to play a bigger role in international diplomacy for Middle East peace and, at the same time, Berri will sponsor another round of dialogue among Lebanon's main community heads partly aimed at disarming Hizbullah and all Palestinian groups backed by Syria and Iran. Hizbullah (party of God) will remain a political group but its fighters and weapons will be absorbed by the government's legal defence and/or security forces.

Saudi Arabia has long been a backer of a stable Lebanon. The long and bloody civil war in Lebanon was stopped in 1990 after the mediation of Riyadh, which led to the signing of the historic Ta'if Agreement in 1989. Iraq has yet to reach the point of no return. Unlike Lebanon during the 1975-1990 war, most of Iraq in fact is quiet. The sectarian attacks seem to take place in few areas, mainly Baghdad and its surroundings, and a couple of towns in the north and west of the country. Therefore, there is big hope Iraqi leaders can reach an agreement before things get really bad. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states have been asked by the US to help the Iraqis. They can help with money to finance reconstruction projects that would give the people hope in a better future.

They can help by monitoring their borders to stop infiltration into Iraq by Neo-Salafi militants. And they can help by cracking down on provocative media reports in their countries which incite violence in Iraq in the name of religion. One of these is the Qatar-sponsored al-Jazeera, which since its creation in the 1990s has focused on radical Islam with emphasis on the Neo-Salafis. Qatar is part of the Iran-led alliance.

PM Siniora on Oct. 9 was quoted as saying once his government liberated the disputed Sheb'a Farms, Lebanon will reactivate by the 1949 Armistice Agreement with Israel. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Siniora said Hizbullah was currently incapable of launching any operation against Israel from the south of the Litani River, noting: "There is no need to amend the Armistice Agreement or to negotiate it... We are proceeding gradually toward liberating...[Sheb'a Farms]" - thus reactivating a truce on which UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1701 is based. Siniora said the Lebanese Army will not disarm Hizbullah; however, it had clear instructions to confiscate any weaponry it finds in the south. He said: "The expression disarmament does not exist in our dictionary. What I am saying is that the Army troops have the right to enter any place in the south they want to enter and they will confiscate any weapons they find".

Asked whether he believed Hizbullah's military capabilities were affected after the 34-day war, Siniora said: "There is no doubt that it is currently difficult for Hizbullah to launch any operation from the south of the Litani River". Addressing his Iran/Syria-backed opponents, who have been calling for a national unity government to replace his cabinet, Siniora said there will be no cabinet change before the embattled pro-Syria President Emile Lahoud was replaced. He added: "With the presence of the current president I don't see a reason to change the government". Laboud's extended and final term ends in September 2007.

Siniora said his cabinet's performance during the Israeli offensive on Lebanon was remarkable and that it led to "great accomplishments", adding: "The government was able to come up with the seven-point plan and to amend an international resolution in favour of Lebanon and stopped the Israeli aggression and ensured Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon". But Siniora said everyone in Lebanon was entitled to express their opinions freely and to call for a government change according to democratic norms. However, he said his opponents were Syria's closest allies, adding that he was keen to visit Damascus and normalise relations, if the Syrians were willing to receive him.

Over the past weeks, Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement led by Christian politician Gen. Michel Aoun - which signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year - along with pro-Syria officials and parties have been calling for a national unity government in which all parties are represented. Siniora's cabinet is backed by the March 14 Forces, the influential Maronite Bishops Council (MBC) and more recently by the highest Sunni authority in Lebanon, the Higher Islamic Council (HIC). The HIC has issued a statement questioning the effectiveness of a national unity government which would include opposition members and loyalists who would enjoy equal power to block the passage of any decisions. Among these is a UN-backed tribunal to try those behind Hariri's murder and other assassinations in Lebanon during the Syrian regime's military presence in the country.

The HIC's statement said: "This current government has many responsibilities...mainly the creation of the international tribunal" to try suspects in the assassinations. The MBC said in its last monthly statement recently that calls to change the government were aimed at hindering the UN's creation of the international court. But officials of Hizbullah, which backs Assad's recent vow to derail the UN process to have the assassins tried by such a court, insist there is no link between their demands to change the government and the creation of an international tribunal. At an iftar (dinner during Islam's fasting month of Ramadan, when Muslims are not allowed to lie), Hizbullah MP Hussein Hajj Hassan said: "Hizbullah insists on forming a national unity government to balance the authority and straighten political representation. The Americans do not want the national unity government... Those who reject it are abiding by the Americans orders".

March 14 Forces member and Batroun MP Boutros Harb warned that a change in the current government could result in negative repercussions. Harb said a new government which prevents the formation of the international tribunal might create problems among the Lebanese. Harb, a Maronite, was speaking after a meeting with the head of the MBC, Patriarch and Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, who faced a wave of criticism over the council's recent statement. Harb said: "The Maronite Church is above criticism and its positions are nationalistic". The Sunni Future Movement's leader, MP Sa'd Hariri who is the son of the slain former PM, on Oct. 8 reiterated his support for Siniora's cabinet, saying: "Lebanon's salvation is through Fou'ad Siniora's cabinet. Our salvation is to seize this golden opportunity to liberate Sheb'a Farms and win the release of our prisoners from Israeli jails through Siniora's diplomacy".

Lebanese Army Confiscates Hizbullah Weapons: Lebanese Defence Minister Elias Murr on Oct. 10 confirmed that the Lebanese Army had confiscated weapons belonging to Hizbullah in south Lebanon. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Patriarch Sfeir in Bkirki, Murr said: "There were reports in the media about the confiscation of weapons...Those reports were true". Murr declined to give details about how many weapons had been confiscated and was vague when describing the army's role in disarming the Shi'ite group.

Murr, a son-in-law of President Laboud but an honest man who "will not bow" to the Assad dictatorship, told reporters: "We are carrying out our role as we should. It is our duty to confiscate any apparent weapons. The army has two roles: defending the borders and depriving the enemy from any justification to return to south Lebanon. What we can confirm is that the resistance is co-operating by preventing any armed presence". Hizbullah has agreed that the Lebanese Army can take possession of any arms "found" in the area. Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said last month his fighters would keep their arms, to be used only in the event of another war with Israel. Murr said: "In three or six months the Army will be fully equipped", adding that the number of Army soldiers had risen to 60,000 after the latest crisis. Hizbullah has repeatedly said the Army is more than welcome to any weapons it finds in the south. Murr's announcement came as UN peacekeeping (UNIFIL-II) spokesman Alexander Ivanko on Oct. 10 said a meeting between officers from the Lebanese and Israeli armies would take place in Ras Naqoura by Oct. 14-15). According to Ivanko, the meeting will focus on proposals made by the UNIFIL-II to settle the issue of Israel's occupation of the border village of Ghajar. The Israeli Army withdrew from all other south Lebanese towns early this month, but has kept troops in Ghajar, refusing to hand the village over to the Lebanese Army or UNIFIL. Ivanko said: "UNIFIL hopes the Israelis pull out from the area as soon as possible".

As international troops continue to flow into the south, a batch of Turkish peacekeepers - the first Muslim troops to take part in UNIFIL - arrived in Lebanon on Oct. 9. A Turkish military plane arrived at Beirut's airport with two vehicles and seven officers on board, part of a 270-man engineering corps to be deployed near the southern port city of Tyre to help rebuild bridges and roads damaged in the war. Turkish government spokesman Cemil Cicek on Oct. 10 said the total number of Turkish personnel would eventually reach around 700, including sailors as well as members of the engineering company.

Turkey has already sent a frigate to help an international naval force monitor the Lebanese coast and plans to send other ships in the future. Turkey is predominantly Sunni with close ties to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the GCC and other Sunni Arab states. Its contribution to the peacekeeping force was met with opposition in the Turkish parliament for fear of Turkish troops being drawn into fighting with fellow Muslims to protect Israel. Lebanon's Armenian community has protested the presence of Turkish troops, who are said to invoke Ottoman rule of the Arab world and the 1915 mass deaths which Armenians insist was genocide by Turkey.

Indonesia will delay its deployment of peacekeeping troops to Lebanon by one week for logistical reasons. In a related development, Jakarta on Oct. 10 signed a deal worth around $31m with Renault Trucks to buy 32 French-made armoured personnel carriers and ambulances to be used in Lebanon. (The decision to buy the vehicles angered some lawmakers at a time of rising poverty and unemployment and with crucial infrastructure projects stalled due to lack of funding. The delay in the dispatch of Indonesia's 850-strong force was the second since Indonesia's participation in the mission was confirmed. Military spokesman Ahmad Yani Basuki on Oct. 10 said: "The postponement was due to technical problems...[faced by UNIFIL] in Lebanon. The Indonesian contingent was supposed to leave on Oct. 28 but now the new schedule is slated for Nov. 3 or 4". He said an advance team of around 125 personnel would now leave on Oct. 17, with most of the force leaving in the first week of November. Indonesia had earlier said it expected its team to be on the ground by the beginning of October. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and was quick to offer troops to the mission to enforce Resolution 1701. Israel initially objected such deployment because Indonesia does not have diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. UNIFIL troops on the ground currently number about 5,200).