PEDERSEN BELIEVES HIZBALLAH SERIOUS ABOUT CHANGING

S E C R E T BEIRUT 003130 SIPDIS SIPDIS NSC FOR ABRAMS/DORAN/MARCHESE/HARDING E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/27/2026 TAGS: PREL PTER KCRM LE SY SUBJECT: PEDERSEN BELIEVES HIZBALLAH SERIOUS ABOUT CHANGING LEBANESE CABINET Classified By: Jeffrey Feltman, Ambassador, per 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (S) In a one-on-one meeting with the Ambassador on 9/27, UNSYG Annan's Personal Representative for Lebanon Geir Pedersen said that he found a meeting he had the previous day with his "usual Hizballah contact" (i.e., Wafiq Safa) both "reassuring and alarming." The reassuring part, Pedersen said, was what Safa said about south Lebanon: Hizballah will not take any armed action or provoke UNIFIL or the Lebanese Armed Forces. Nor will Hizballah smuggle arms into south Lebanon. Answering the Ambassador's comments about Hizballah's ability to exercise deniability by using Palestinians instead, Pedersen said that he had put down a marker with Safa on that very point. "I tild him that we know that Hizballah has the best intelligence on the ground" and that, therefore, Hizballah would be aware of any pending Palestinian or al-Qaida strike. The Ambassador reminded Pedersen that Safa had assured him that Hizballah would help keep Summer 2006 a quiet one for Lebanon. ¶2. (S) More worrying, Pedersen said, were Safa's comments on the GOL. Safa was clear. If the March 14 political leadership does not use the month of Ramadan -- which Safa assured Pedersen would remain quiet -- to move toward a national unity cabinet, then Hizballah will use all means in November to throw out the Siniora cabinet. Hizballah will use resignations from the cabinet and the Parliament and street action to throw out Siniora, just as street action by pro-independence demonstrators forced Omar Karami to resign the premiership on 2/28/05. On reforming the cabinet, Safa told Pedersen explicitly that Hizballah insisted on a coalition including Michel Aoun that would have the constitutionally permitted "blocking minority" (more than a third) of cabinet decisions. ¶3. (S) Safa did not link the need for a blocking minority to the Hariri tribunal, but Pedersen did. He noted that Safa expressed deep concern about the tribunal. He expressed outrage that the draft statute worked out by UN/OLA and the GOL cited "crimes against humanity" -- which provoked Pedersen to tease Safa that Hizballah and the USG agreed -- and consternation that Bashar al-Asad's immunity could be stripped. Pedersen said that he had the impression that Safa, and Hizballah more generally, has now been given the order to stop the tribunal. The Ambassador asked if Safa seemed nervous about possible Hizballah involvement in the Hariri murder, or if he was merely doing the Syrians' bidding. Pedersen said that he could not tell. COMMENT -------------- ¶4. (S) Officially, Siniora's cabinet now consists of 24 members (although Minister of Interior Hassan Saba, whose February resignation was never formally accepted, remains inactive). For the constitutional blocking minority, Hizballah would need nine ministers (one third plus one minister) on its side. Hizballah now can only count reliably on the five Shia (three of which come from Nabih Berri's Amal),plus Minister of Environment Yacoub Sarraf (allied with President Emile Lahoud). If the cabinet expanded to 30 ministers -- the next available size, given the need to maintain a complicated formula of confessional balance -- then Hizballah would need to have 11 ministers in all reliably on its side. The March 14 majority in parliament will not naturally give a vote of confidence to such a cabinet, and Hizballah's apparent willingness to insist on the blocking minority is, as Geir said, indeed worrying. If the real issue is to stop the Hariri tribunal, then all Hizballah must do in reality is make Lebanon ungovernable by getting the Shia to resign all posts: the lack of a viable cabinet or parliament would prevent the ratification of the tribunal's statute. FELTMAN