THE SEDUCTION OF THE WIDOW HARIRI: HOPES FOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BEIRUT 000707

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

NSC FOR ABRAMS/SINGH/MARCHESE/HARDING

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/21/2027
TAGS: PREL PGOV KDEM LE SY SA
SUBJECT: THE SEDUCTION OF THE WIDOW HARIRI: HOPES FOR
PREMIERSHIP DASHED BY FAMILY, SAUDI ARABIA

REF: EMBASSY BEIRUT 4/23/07 SITREP (NOTAL)

Classified By: Jeffrey Feltman, Ambassador, per 1.4 (b) and (d).

SUMMARY
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1. (C) Further to something we first mentioned in the
4/23/07 daily sitrep, beach resort owner and political gadfly
Roger Edde has pursued a far-fetched plan to achieve his
long-shot goal of becoming Lebanon's next president: he has
dangled before the eyes of Rafiq Hariri's Paris-based widow
Nazek the prize of becoming Prime Minister herself. Edde
claims to have won the blessings of a less-than-salubrious
triumvirate -- Syria, Hizballah, and President Emile Lahoud
-- for his plan to have a Nazek Hariri-run technocratic
cabinet replace that of Fouad Siniora now, with Edde's own
selection as president to follow in the autumn. Edde also
claimed to have unspecified USG support, supposedly acquired
via contacts of his Amcit wife. The appeal for Nazek would
be the opportunity to kick out the usurper Siniora, whom she
finds loathsome, and restore what she sees as the rightful
Hariri presence in the Grand Serail. MP Saad Hariri and
Saudi Ambassador Abdulaziz Khoja separately told the
Ambassador on 5/19 that both the Hariri family and Saudi
Arabia have vetoed the idea; Talking by phone with French
Ambassador Bernard Emie (who was with Ambassador Feltman at
the time),Hariri legal advisor Basile Yared reported from
Paris on 5/19 that the idea was "dead." Dead but not buried:
Walid Jumblatt, suspicious of Nazek's hatred of Siniora,
remains nervous that something "fishy" (Jumblatt's preferred
adjective for anything benefiting Syria) is up. End summary.

EDDE PLOTS TO REPLACE SINIORA WITH NAZEK;
AN EDDE PRESIDENCY TO FOLLOW IN AUTUMN
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2. (C) We first reported, while writing with a healthy dose
of skepticism, the outlines of this story in our 4/23/07
sitrep, after Roger Edde himself sketched out part of his
thinking to the DCM. On 5/18, we again got wind of this
strange tale when Walid Jumblatt called the Ambassador to ask
what we knew of the machinations of Edde (best known for his
high-end beach resort, home-away-from-home for Lebanon's
face-lifted beauties in summer, and his public break with
Michel Aoun, when Aoun refused to include Edde on his
Jbeil/Keseroun parliamentary ticket in 2005). Jumblatt,
always wary of speaking by phone for more than a few seconds,
said only that it involved "the Queen Mother," the scrap of a
disguise March 14 insiders use to describe the Paris-based
widow of Rafiq Hariri, Nazek. "Look into it," Jumblatt urged.


4. (C) In a 5/19 meeting with Saudi Ambassador Khoja, the
Ambassador learned more, supplementing what we had included
in our sitrep. Edde, a few days earlier, had called on Khoja
to seek Saudi blessing for a plan to solve the cabinet
crisis. According to this plan, in the coming days, Prime
Minister Fouad Siniora should resign, triggering the
constitutional collapse of the cabinet. In the requisite
consultative process, Nazek Hariri would be nominated by a
majority of the MPs as the new Prime Minister. Nazek would
name a technocratic cabinet modeled on the Najib Mikati
cabinet of 2005 that would oversee Lebanon until presidential
elections in the autumn. Given Edde's success in solving
Lebanon's long-standing cabinet crisis (that began with the
November 11 Shia ministers' resignations from the cabinet),
Edde would be the natural consensus candidate to be elected
president. Edde indicated that, as a concession to March 14
and to Fouad Siniora, Siniora could postpone his resignation
until after the UNSC approves the Special Tribunal for
Lebanon.

SYRIA, LAHOUD, HIZBALLAH, NAZEK --
EVEN THE USG -- REPORTEDLY ON BOARD
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5. (C) Edde told Khoja that, after getting the approval of
President Emile Lahoud (whose signature on any new cabinet
decree is required) and Hizballah, he traveled to Damascus to
brief Syrian intelligence officer Mohammed Nassif Kheirbek
(Abu Wael),advisor to VP Farouk ash-Shara and reportedly in
charge of the Lebanon portfolio. Abu Wael approved Edde's
plan. Edde then flew to Paris to meet with Nazek, in the
presence of Johnny Abdo, the Paris-based former head of
Lebanon's military intelligence (and who is close to the
Hariris). Nazek and agreed. Even the Americans have given a

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green light, Edde said. "Jeff is on board?" Khoja asked.
No, Edde responded. While the DCM had been told the broad
outlines, Edde said that he did not want to work through the
U.S. Embassy. Instead, he went directly to contacts in
Washington via his Amcit wife. Very high-level USG officials
have approved the plan; DOD is on board, according to Edde.


SAUDIS TO SAY NO
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6. (C) Thus, Edde told Khoja that Saudi approval was the
final step needed before implementation. Khoja told Edde he
would have to consult with his government and respond later.
In the meantime, the Saudis told Khoja "no way," a red light
message that Khoja has not yet had the opportunity to convey
back to Edde (currently in Cannes for the film festival).
But Saudi vetoes aside, Khoja asked whether it is possible
that the USG might support such a plan. The Ambassador
responded that it was difficult to imagine USG enthusiasm for
a plan that was hatched with the backing of Lahoud,
Hizballah, and Syria. Khoja seemed satisfied with the
answer.

SAAD HARIRI SAYS NO;
JUMBLATT REMAINS SUSPICIOUS
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7. (C) Later on 5/19, MP Saad Hariri, chuckling momentarily
about the "amazing plan" of Edde, insisted that the Hariri
family itself said no. Whatever Nazek Hariri's problem with
Fouad Siniora, the answer was not to replace Siniora with
Nazek now. Saad insisted that Nazek had immediately said no
to Edde's advances. (Khoja, by contrast, suspected that
Nazek would have found the opportunity to kick the hated
Siniora out of the Grand Serail irresistible.) The
Ambassador later spoke with French Ambassador Bernard Emie at
a reception both attended. Expressing astonishment over the
tale, which he was hearing for the first time, Emie said that
he could imagine a scenario by which French officials
actually support such a "crazy scheme." Emie called the
Paris-based Hariri legal advisor Basile Yared, asking Yared
whether he had heard of a "new idea involving the lady."
Yared assured Emie that the idea was "dead."


8. (C) Briefed by phone later, the ever-suspicious Jumblatt
wondered if Edde, "a fishy guy," would really give up so
easily. Edde, Jumblatt noted, always claims to have
high-level USG and French contacts, and Nazek truly hates
Siniora. Edde's ambition and the Widow Hariri's loathing of
Siniora are a bad combination, Jumblatt said.

COMMENT
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9. (C) When Lebanon's political history for 2007 is
written, we hope that Edde's proposal turns out to be merely
a mildly amusing footnote. But Khoja, like Jumblatt, was
taking it fairly seriously. What seems to worry them is the
possibility that forces allied with Syria could exploit Nazek
Hariri's sense of outrage that the current occupant of the
Grand Serail offices and residence of the Prime Minister is
Fouad Siniora and not a Hariri family member. With Jacques
Chirac now out of office, Nazek's political influence,
exercised via Chirac ever since Saad Hariri's assumption of
the political leadership of the family, seems certain to
diminish. Thus she might have considered Edde's proposal a
kind of political lifeline. We remember that the Saudis
intervened twice before this to discourage Nazek's ambitions:
soon after Rafiq Hariri's murder, when the Hariri family
(prompted in part by Saudi Arabia) anointed Saad, not Nazek
or Saad's elder brother Baha', to carry on the political
legacy, and again fter the 2005 elections when Nazek
considered herself to be a worthy contender for prime
minister. We also hear from an increasing number of people
that Syria, Hizballah, and Emile Lahoud are determined, above
all, to kick Siniora out of the Grand Serail once and for
all. (Resigned Minister of Health Mohammed Khalifeh, allied
with Parliament Speaker Berri, told the Ambassador in a 5/19
meeting that it would be easier to find a cabinet compromise
if March 14 would jettison Siniora in favor of "almost anyone
else.") So, in a classic case of politics making strange
bedfellows, there is overlap between their goal and Nazek's
hopes.
FELTMAN