There were many comments, analyses and press interviews revolving around the indictment issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) against four members of Hezbollah, including the Hezbollah leader Mustafa Badreddine, brother-in-law of Imad Mughnieh, the Hezbollah military leader who was assassinated in Damascus in 2007. I concluded that I could not add anything important to what has already been published in our countries and around the world on the subject, and so I opted to publish here today and tomorrow, parts from the interview I conducted with President Bashar al-Assad on 30/05/2010 in the presidential palace overlooking Damascus, and parts from another interview I had conducted with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in his office in Beirut's southern suburb, which was destroyed in the 2006 summer war. The timing of these interviews is in fact important. The interview with Nasrallah had taken place at a time when it was Syria that was accused of assassinating the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and most of our conversation revolved around this accusation and the nature of the tribunal that was to be formed. The interview with the Syrian President, meanwhile, took place as Hezbollah was being accused of the assassination. However, the issue occupied only one out of six pages, because the main topic of the interview was the mediation I was conducting through a formal Egyptian request to mend relations between Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Bashar al-Assad, but which ultimately failed. I said to Dr. Bashar: “The tribunal is no doubt coming, because I have never heard of a UN Security Resolution that was issued only to be cancelled later”. He said, “I am one hundred percent sure that the investigation will exonerate Syria in the assassination of Hariri, and you shall see that soon”. I tried to get more information, and I told him that I am starting to believe that, but then what about Hezbollah [?]. Each day, we hear leaks about the investigation and Hezbollah members involved in planning or carrying out the assassination. Yet, President Assad told me that he finds these claims strange, and that Hezbollah does not usually pursue such acts. I presented a scenario to the president whereby the military wing in Hezbollah, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, planned to assassinate Hariri behind the back of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. For this reason, Imad Mughnieh was killed, before the investigation led to him. President Assad replied that this scenario and others were the subject of research here, and he pointed at the desk at which we were sitting. But he then said that he finds the accusation strange, because it is not customary for Hezbollah to engage in such acts. At that point, I made a mental note that while the President absolutely denied Syria's involvement, he did not do the same for Hezbollah. Perhaps he did that because he cannot deny a charge made against someone else, but could only express his opinion. I took my notes after the interview and flew back to London, where I went back to my previous interview with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to compare between them. It was clear, from the beginning, that the leader of Hezbollah was concerned about the politicization of the tribunal, the U.S. influence on the Security Council, and the possibility that the tribunal may be exploited to set up Syria and attempt to change the regime there. I had a meeting with Haj Hussein Khalil, Nasrallah's political aide, before meeting with Nasrallah for the interview. Haj Hussein had returned from a meeting with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora at six in the evening. While I was with him, Saad Hariri called him and I understood from the phone conversation that he gave him an offer for Hezbollah's deputies to end their boycott of the government. Haj Hussein refused the offer, and said that it did not meet Hezbollah's requirements. In the meeting with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Saad Hariri called him twice, and I believe he was trying to improve on the offer presented to Hezbollah, but Nasrallah still rejected it. It seems that Saad Hariri was embarrassed and refrained from calling again, so the next phone call came from Haj Hussein, who notified Nasrallah that Saad Hariri called him again and gave him a new offer. Nasrallah then refused the new offer, and asked Haj Hussein to say the following to Saad Hariri (literally): “Tell Sheikh Saad that I have three kids, of whom the youngest is my most beloved. He can take him but he cannot ask me to do that”. Nonetheless, Sayyed Hassan was very polite with Saad and always addressed him as ‘Sheikh'. After the phone call, Nasrallah told me the reason why he refused to return to the government. Tomorrow, the reader can find the details of Hezbollah's position in my interview with Sayyed Nasrallah. I saw Saad Hariri after that in Dubai, and told him that I was with Haj Hussein and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as he was calling them, and asked him why he kept trying, only to hear the same rejection. He said he wanted to clear the conscience of the March 14 coalition, so no one could say that the government did not attempt to reach an agreement with Hezbollah. I continue tomorrow. [email protected]
