Australia asks citizens to repay evacuation costs

Australia asks citizens to repay evacuation costs
The Daily Star

The Australian government has asked Lebanese-Australians to pay a portion of the cost of evacuating them from Lebanon last summer, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Sunday. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has sent letters to thousands of Lebanese asking for voluntary payment of around $650 per adult and $500 for children. The report quoted a spokesman for the Islamic Friendship Association, Keysar Trad, as saying in a radio news program that he believes payment would mainly affect Australian citizens who were residents in Lebanon. "If people can afford it and they're being given the option to pay for their own transport, I think that those who can afford it will do so," he said. - Naharnet

Warm weather brings weekend reprieve to hard-hit Downtown businesses

Warm weather brings weekend reprieve to hard-hit Downtown businesses
By James Farha
Special to The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Full restaurants and lively sidewalks greeted businesses in Downtown Beirut for the second Sunday in a row over the weekend as temperatures hovered at 35 degrees for two days running. "Business has been up at the weekend for two weeks now, it's very good," said Talal, host at Scoozi Italian Restaurant, just meters away from the opposition encampment. "We still only open for half of the week but at the weekend we can get 110 customers for lunch. Still, during the week we may only get 10," he said at the end of a busy lunchtime shift.

In the Place de L'Etoile, young families played with toys and scooters while others took shelter in the shade of the clock tower and surrounding trees. The Cafe Al-Saa was packed with families, and young people basked in the sunshine as others kicked a football or strolled beneath a blue sky and a drifting Lebanese flag. Opinion as to the cause of the increase in business remained divided, although all agreed that the turn in the weather was helping. "Obviously the number of people is related to the weather and the season," said one Downtown visitor, who wished to remain anonymous. "People don't want to sit outside in cafes in the winter, but people aren't returning just because of the weather." Talal said the area had seen no commotion despite the ongoing opposition sit-in. "There are no problems of security from up there [nodding toward the sit-in] or down there," he said, although he maintained that the upward trend in sales was attributable to the favorable temperatures.

Another man, speaking anonymously, recalled how busy the streets had been before the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. "It is definitely better than it was a month or so ago but it is still nothing compared to before Hariri's death," he said. "For a long time people have not been coming because of fear of the general political situation, not just because of the opposition." Dotted among the Sunday afternoon revelers was the usual guard of Lebanese Army troops. "They are not just symbolic, they are always here," the man said. "They are protecting the Parliament building." Opposition supporters, who have been encamped in the Downtown area since December, are demanding a more representative national unity government and early elections. The demands have gone unmet, but in the months since January's street clashes, a peace and relative stability has been restored to the capital, and business is slowly returning to the once-bustling Downtown district. "It is better than it was a month or two months ago but it is still very light today and we are only busy at lunchtimes.," said Naseer Hassan, a waiter at the Petit Cafe, with a cautious optimism. "Hopefully, it's getting better bit by bit."

Irrelevant to Lebanon but too good to pass on :P

Bush nearly places Queen Elizabeth in 18th century By Caren Bohan
REUTERS

President George W. Bush, no stranger to the occasional verbal misstep, nearly placed Queen Elizabeth II in the 18th century on Monday in welcoming her to the White House on a state visit. Britain's queen and Prince Philip were treated to a formal arrival ceremony on the White House South Lawn, complete with a marching fife-and-drum corps. Trumpets heralded the arrival of the dignitaries. The U.S. Air Force Band played national anthems before 7,000 invited guests on a sunny spring day. Both Bush and the queen addressed the crowd as the royal couple approached the end of a six-day U.S. visit that included ceremonies marking the 400th anniversary of the British settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, and the Kentucky Derby. Bush noted the queen's long history of dealing with successive American governments, just barely stopping himself before dating her to 1776, the year the 13 British colonies declared their independence from Britain. Elizabeth has occupied the British throne for 55 years and is 81.

"The American people are proud to welcome your majesty back to the United States, a nation you've come to know very well. After all you've dined with 10 U.S. presidents. You've helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- in 1976," Bush said. Bush looked at the queen sheepishly. She peered back at him from beneath her black and white hat. "She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child," Bush said as the crowd burst into laughter.

Taking the podium, the queen quickly swung into her prepared speech, hailing the closeness of U.S.-British relations. "It is the moment to take stock of our present friendship, rightly taking pleasure from its strengths while never taking these for granted," she said. "And it is the time to look forward, jointly renewing our commitment to a more prosperous, safer and freer world."

White House spokesman Tony Snow made light of the incident. "I don't know that a lot of people joke with the queen but the president did and it worked out just fine," he said. Bush and his wife, Laura, were to play host to the queen later at a formal white-tie state dinner at the White House on Monday night.

Lebanon's National Anthem

كلّـــــــنا للـــــــوطن للعلـــــى للـــــــعلم
ملء عين الـــــــزمن ســـيفنا والــــــقلم
ســـــهلنا والجبــــل مــــنبت للـــــرجال
قولنـــــا والعمــــــل في ســبيل الكمال
كلّـــــــنا للـــــــوطن للعلـــــى للـــــــعلم
كلّــــنا للــــوطن

شــــــــيخنا والفتى عنـد صوت الوطـن
أســــــــد غابٍ متى ســــاورتنا الـــفتن
شــــــــرقنا قـــــلبه أبــــــــداً لبنــــــان
صانــــــــه ربّــــــــه لمدى الأزمـــــــــان
كلّـــــــنا للـــــــوطن للعلـــــى للـــــــعلم
كلّــــنا للــــوطن

بحــــــــره بـــــــرّه درّة الشــــــــــرقين
رفده بــــــــــــــــرّه مــالئ القطـــــــبين
إســـــــمه عـــــــزّه مـنذ كـــان الجدود
مجـــــــــــــده أرزه رمـــــزه للخلـــــود
كلّـــــــنا للـــــــوطن للعلـــــى للـــــــعلم
كلّــــنا للــــوطن

All of us for the Nation, for glory and the Flag
The eye of the ages is full of our sword and pen (valour and writings)
Our plain and the Mountain are birthgivers of men
Our word and work walk the road to perfection
All of us for the Nation, for glory and the Flag
All of us for the Nation!

All of us for the Nation, for glory and the Flag
Our elders and our youths are at the Nation's call
They are like forest lions when hardship besets us
The heart of our East is Lebanon forever,
May her God preserve her until end of time.
All of us for the Nation, for glory and the Flag
All of us for the Nation!

All of us for the Nation, for glory and the Flag
Her sea and her land are the pearl of the two Orients
Her helpfulness and good faith fill the two poles
Her name is her honor and power since the generations came to be
Her greatness is her Cedar, her symbol till the end of times
All of us for the Nation, for glory and the Flag
All of us for the Nation!

Hezbollah ready but not seeking new Israel war

Hezbollah ready but not seeking new Israel war
REUTERS

BEIRUT - Hezbollah guerrillas, the bane of successive Israeli governments, have rearmed since last year’s war in Lebanon but have little interest in provoking a new one, analysts say. Israel has complained about Hezbollah’s resupply effort, but it too seems unlikely to plunge into any fresh conflict until it has digested the lessons of the previous one. Israel is also preoccupied with the political firestorm around Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, rebuked by an inquiry for his handling of the war. Lebanese security and political sources said Hezbollah had amply replenished its rocket arsenal and had received improved anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles from Iran via Syria since a United Nations-backed truce halted hostilities in August. The Beirut government says it has no proof of arms transfers from Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed the issue last month with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, who opposes any move to put UN troops on the Syria-Lebanon border. ‘What the group took six years to achieve (after Israeli troops left Lebanon in 2000), it has achieved in six months,’ one political source said of Hezbollah’s military buildup. A security source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said Hezbollah was in better shape than before the war that erupted after it seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12. The Shia guerrillas have had no visible presence in the border region since Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers took over the area south of the Litani river. But Hezbollah can call up hundreds of villagers with military training if need be.

Defence line
Hezbollah has also established a new defence line, with trenches, bunkers and rocket bases just north of the Litani and in the southern part of the Bekaa Valley to the east, the sources said. They said the group has sent hundreds of fighters, both new recruits and veterans, for training in Iran -- more than making up for its war casualties, including 270 or so dead. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has openly stated that military preparations are under way, couching them as precautions rather than as a prelude to attack. This week he jubilantly noted the Israeli inquiry’s flaying of Olmert for his conduct of the war, in which Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah or stop it firing rockets across the border. ‘Today the climate in the whole of the Zionist entity is that this war was a failure,’ Nasrallah said on Wednesday. Many Israelis agree, with two thirds telling pollsters Olmert should resign. Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz argue that Israel made some gains in the war because UN peacekeepers had replaced Hezbollah fighters on the border. A UN Security Council resolution in 2004 demanded the disarming of all militias in Lebanon. Hezbollah, the only faction to keep its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war, says it is an anti-Israel resistance movement, not a militia.

Regional conflict
Analysts in Lebanon and Israel said Hezbollah was in no mood to go into battle again -- unless any US or Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear installations set off a regional conflict. ‘Hezbollah are thumping their chests now because they are trying to get some credit for the mess in Israel,’ said Timur Goksel, a former spokesman for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. He said their posture was not aggressive. ‘They get credit in the Arab world and their own community for challenging Israel in the public domain, but I don’t think they’ll go beyond that.’ Hezbollah must consider its own people -- Shia civilians who took the brunt of Israeli bombing and now want to rebuild. A political party as well as an armed group, Hezbollah has also been locked for months in a domestic stalemate that pits the Western-backed government against factions close to Syria. ‘Hezbollah is not looking for a new war,’ retired Israeli intelligence analyst Matti Steinberg said. ‘It is aiming to reshape the character of the Lebanese state. It is not looking southward to the border, but inward to Beirut.’ While Hezbollah devotes part of its energies to the Lebanese power struggle, its alliances with Iran and Syria link it to broader conflicts that could lead to a military flare-up. ‘What troubles me is that perhaps the Americans will attack Iran,’ Aharon Zeevi-Farkah, a former chief of Israel’s military intelligence, told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot. ‘That would thrust us into a war and the home front is not ready.’ Some Israeli analysts say another conflict is inevitable. ‘Israel cannot live with a situation in which Hezbollah is regrouping and rearming,’ Efraim Halevy, former chief of the Mossad spy agency, told Reuters. ‘Hezbollah, for its part, is predicated on the idea of an ultimate confrontation.’

Beirut ranks near bottom of desirable cities for foreign executives

Beirut ranks near bottom of desirable cities for foreign executives
For some, Lebanese capital fails to live up to minimum required standards
By Michael Bluhm
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Beirut is one of the Arab world's least-desirable cities for an executive to be posted, according to the annual rankings of world metropolises assembled by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Beirut finished 15th among 18 Arab locales in quality of life, placing behind Algiers, Damascus, Djibouti, Riyadh and the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Only Sanaa, Khartoum and Baghdad earned lower scores than Beirut, which came in 179th of 215 cities graded worldwide. Beirut tallied 52.5 points, under the Arab average of 59.7 points and the global average of 76.3 points. On the global chart, Beirut wound up immediately behind Tehran, Karachi and Benin's capital Cotonou. Despite the bleak outside evaluation, foreign executives working here quickly ticked off lists of the city's positives. But they did recognize the difficulties for foreigners here, and one of the countless emigres from the Lebanese business elite made clear that today's unstable Beirut is not a draw for business talent.

Regionally, Beirut compares favorably to other urban centers because of its climate, the widespread fluency in foreign languages and the fact that locals are used to outsiders in their midst, said Sabbah Al Haj, CEO of the executive-search firm Management Plus. Aside from business interaction being simplified by the Lebanese peoples' proficiency in foreign languages, the ease of traveling around the country also adds to the quality of life here, said European Union official, Syvia Beamish. "It's much easier for a Western woman than some of the other countries I've been in," she said. "I like the food. The nightlife is great."

One of the biggest drawbacks about Beirut, according to Beamish and the Mercer study, is its lack of cleanliness. Mercer's rankings placed Beirut 14th among 18 Arab cities - topping Djibouti in this category, although not in the overall list - in terms of health and sanitation, which considered air pollution and waste removal. "The pollution upsets me," Beamish said. "My big complaint about the thing is there are no parks and the traffic - people honk at me all the time." In the workplace, foreign executives are often disappointed by their pay packages, which typically lag 40-65 percent behind compensation in the Gulf, Haj said. Outsiders also frequently face problems with what they perceive as a lackadaisical Lebanese approach to work. "They tend to be a little bit more serious than the Lebanese," Haj said. "They miss cultural activities that Lebanon lost quite a bit of during the war. They get angry with the traffic. It drives them mad - it drives me mad, too."

Administrative red tape also makes foreigner's lives here unpleasant, said Julia Brickell, country director for the International Finance Corporation. For expatriates, Beirut is "an acquired taste - living here on a daily basis is extremely difficult," said Brickell, who has lived here 11 years. "Having said that, I will be dragged kicking and screaming from here. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. "I think Beirut's the best-kept secret in the universe, and I hope it stays that way."

But from the perspective of advancing a career, Beirut has fallen far behind cities such as Dubai. Dubai offers superior compensation, career opportunities and a higher caliber of people in the business community, said Rabih Sultani, a Lebanon native now vice president of corporate investments at Shuaa Capital, one of the Middle East's leading investment banks. "Your Internet works, there's electricity, there's water, your kids are safe - basic things that we don't have [in Beirut]," Sultani said. "Beirut's no longer an option for me. I don't see it as an option for a while to come."

Syria built underground missile complex - Israeli paper

Syria built underground missile complex - Israeli paper
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

JERUSALEM: Syria has built a fortified complex buried deep underground and cloaked in secrecy to manufacture and store ballistic missiles capable of striking Israel, an Israeli newspaper said on Monday. The complex includes 30 reinforced concrete bunkers, production facilities, development laboratories and command posts, the mass-selling Yediot Ahronot quoted "foreign experts" as saying, without specifying its location. The "missile city" houses mainly Scud missiles capable of reaching anywhere in Israel. Given its weak air power, Damascus is boosting its arsenal of surface-to-surface missiles and protecting them in the complex, Yediot said.

According to the paper, Syria has 200 Scud-B missiles, 60 Scud-C and a certain number of North Korean Scud-D missiles with a range of 700 kilometers, and has developed chemical warheads for all its Scuds. The chemical warfare agents are stored in a separate facility, Yediot quoted the foreign experts as saying. It also said Iran recently supplied Syria with 100 Chinese shore-to-sea C-802 missiles.In March, military and government sources told AFP that Syria had positioned thousands of rockets on its border with Israel, as part of indications that Damascus may be preparing for future "low-intensity warfare." Syrian President Bashar Assad has made peace overtures in recent months to Israel but the Jewish state rejected them, saying Damascus must first stop providing support to Hizbullah and Hamas.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria collapsed in 2000, mainly because of a deadlock over the return of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. - AFP