LEBANON: JUMBLATT SAYS EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIRUT 002975 SIPDIS SIPDIS NOFORN STATE NEA/ELA FOR ABERCROMBIE-WINSTANLEY/WILLIAMS/DONICK NSC FOR ABRAMS/DORAN/MARCHESE/HARDING E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/13/2026 TAGS: PREL PTER LE SUBJECT: LEBANON: JUMBLATT SAYS EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND TRIBUNAL Classified By: Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ambassador. Reason 1.4 (b) and (d). SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (S/NF) During a 9/13 meeting with Ambassador and POLOFF in the library of his Mukhtara home, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said the next three months will be critical for Lebanon and that the Hariri tribunal will be the driving concern. Claiming that last week's attempted assassination of ISF Lieutenant Colonel Samir Shehate is a sign of things to come, Jumblatt suggested that the March 14 movement will have a delicate balancing act between courting Nabih Berri and encouraging independent Shi'a while not provoking Hizballah into an armed internal conflict. Jumblatt will travel on 9/14 to Italy where he will meet with FM D'Alema, and plans to go next week to Saudi Arabia, which he claims has stepped up its funding to March 14-allied institutions in Lebanon (beyond the $500 million already granted for reconstruction). END SUMMARY. KEEP BERRI CLOSE TO COUNTERACT HIZBALLAH -------------- ¶2. (S/NF) Discussing Hassan Nasrallah's belligerent 9/12 al-Jazeera interview, Jumblatt remarked that Nasrallah has lost his "serenity" and is now using "insulting words" to describe the Siniora government. Partially, he is responding to the Siniora visit to Saudi Arabia and Tony Blair's visit to Lebanon, which were both viewed as moves to counter Hizballah. Jumblatt sees a deeper reason; he believes that Hizballah, ordered by Syria and supported by Aounists and others, aims to alter or bring down the Siniora government before it has a chance to approve the statute to establish the Hariri tribunal. The Syrians are scared of the tribunal "more than anything else", claimed Jumblatt, and "will do anything" to either change the composition of the current March 14-dominated Cabinet or cause it to collapse. Jumblatt even believes Hizballah would turn its weapons on other Lebanese, "if ordered to do so." ¶3. (S/NF) Thus, while Nasrallah adopted a more threatening tone towards the Siniora government in his al-Jazeera interview, at the same time he suggested a seemingly benign compromise of simply adding some Aounist ministers to the current Cabinet. However, remarked Jumblatt, if this were to happen, it would give the "anti-March 14" ministers (for lack of a better term) a blocking minority in the Cabinet, thereby allowing them to potentially kill the tribunal. (Note. According to the Constitution, a blocking minority requires over one-third of Cabinet ministers. In the current Cabinet of twenty-four ministers, there are eight who are not with March 14, not enough to block any legislation. However, with the addition of just one "anti-March 14" minister, there would be enough for a blocking minority. End Note.) ¶4. (S/NF) Jumblatt said that -- in a typically complex Levantine chain of transmission -- Nabih Berri told Druze minister Ghazi Aridi that Bashar Asad had asked Hizballah to resign from the Siniora government if necessary. Given this threat of a Hizballah walk-out, Jumblatt summed up his strategy for keeping Shi'a representation in the Siniora government: "Bribe Berri. There's no other way." While Jumblatt acknowledges that Saad Hariri's initiative to cultivate Shi'a contacts and encourage opposition voices such as the Mufti of Tyre Sheikh Ali al-Amin will help counteract Hizballah in the long-run, in the immediate term the key figure remains Berri, with his three Cabinet ministers. ¶5. (S/NF) While Berri insists he supports the tribunal, according to Jumblatt, he has also complained that reconstruction money is not being channelled through his Council for the South. Jumblatt suggested that this should be remedied. "Do not let Nabih be isolated," he warned. Jumblatt also suggests that March 14 not go on the "offensive" against Hizballah but instead call for resuming the National Dialogue as a way to avoid having a defensive Hizballah lash out violently. Jumblatt quipped that BEIRUT 00002975 002 OF 003 Nasrallah himself not show up at the National Dialogue venue, since "we are not all keen to become martyrs with him." TROUBLE UP NORTH? -------------- ¶6. (S/NF) Jumblatt said that there are ominous signs that trouble is brewing, especially in northern Lebanon, adding that, "we have to expect problems in the next couple of months." Word had reached him that a convoy of arms had been spotted moving from Homs in Syria to a Sunni fundamentalist group in Seer ad-Dinneyeh in northern Lebanon. Jumblatt informed the Ambassador that this group is led by the "son of Said Sha'aban, the former Amir at-Tawheed (Leader of Monotheism)," and is funded by Iran. Jumblatt is also worried by a recent query from the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon about whether he knew anything about "underground tunnels connecting Lebanon to Syria" near Akkar in northern Lebanon. This was the first Jumblatt had heard of such rumored tunnels, but he found it significant that Ambassador Boukin would mention the possibility. SYRIAN CONTACTS -------------- ¶7. (S/NF) The Ambassador asked if Jumblatt is maintaining his contact with exiled former Syrian Ba'ath party luminaries Abdel Halim Khaddam and Hikmet Shihabi. According to Jumblatt, Khaddam has a "message" to pass to him, which an emissary will collect from Paris early next week, while Shihabi is planning to return from Paris to Los Angeles in two weeks or so. Jumblatt said that the SARG -- specifically Asif Shawkat -- had tried to entice Shihabi back to Syria, but that Shihabi, seeing nothing for himself in Syria, decided, after flirting with the idea, to reject the offer. ¶8. (S/NF) In a poignant aside, Jumblatt said that Shihabi had recently informed him that the man responsible for ordering the assassination of Walid's father Kamal Joumblatt in 1977 was in fact presidential younger brother Rifa'at al-Asad, and not Mohammed al-Khawry (NFI) as Walid had supposed. Jumblatt said his father was killed for questioning the Alawite minority's right to govern Syria. "That's all it takes," noted Joumblatt drily, ticking off a number of notable Arabs targeted over the years for committing the same crime of mentioning minority/Alawite rule. Even journalists Samir Kassir (murdered 6/2/05) and May Chidiac (hideously maimed in 9/25/05 car bomb attack) had offered analysis about Alawite rule over a Sunni majority, Jumblatt claimed. THE EUROPEANS -------------- ¶9. (S/NF) Dubbing it "the conspiracy at the Serail", Jumblatt said that he joined Siniora and Hariri for an exclusive lunch -- Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea was furious at not being invited, according to Jumblatt -- with Tony Blair at the Grand Serail on September 11. The Lebanese primarily pushed Blair for additional security support, saying the GOL needs a credible deterrent against Hizballah. Blair wanted assurances though that weapons and equipment wouldn't end up in the wrong hands. "I responded to him that they aren't all Shi'a in the army," Jumblatt told the Ambassador (Comment. We hope they gave clearer assurances than that. As we have noted in other messages, LAF control over equipment provided to them has been traditionally quite good. End Comment.) ¶10. (S/NF) Jumblatt said that he had met with fellow socialists, including Segolene Royale, during an international party conference in La Rochelle in late August. While Royale had been uninformed on Middle East issues, she seems a quick study to Jumblatt. He suspects a socialist administration in France would want to support the Israeli Labor party as much as possible, and that could possibly include engaging with Damascus. Jumblatt said that he has warned Royale to "be careful with the Asad mafioso", though BEIRUT 00002975 003 OF 003 he encouraged engagement with Iran. COMMENT -------------- ¶11. (S/NF) This was a worrying meeting with Jumblatt. Given the shrill calls from Aoun and Nasrallah for the Siniora government to resign in favor of a national unity government, the increasing rumors of illicit arms shipments to groups arrayed against March 14, and word of a post-Ramadan Aounist civil disobedience campaign, we feel that the tribunal statute needs to be brought before the Lebanese Cabinet as soon as possible before the pressure builds any further. While the Secretariat will probably want to wait until after the Brammertz report release in late September, we propose UNSYG Annan forward the statute to the Security Council immediately following that for (hopefully) rapid Council approval. In the interim, any differences between Council members regarding the statute will need to be ironed out. Jumblatt clarly linked the escalated rhetoric to Syrian fears on the tribunal, but we wonder whether those fears -- and thus the rhetoric -- will be reduced after the next Brammertz report, if (as we have been led to believe) there will be nothing sensational in the report. FELTMAN