Profile: Rafik Hariri

 By Chris Johnston, Times Online

February 14, 2005

 
 Rafik Hariri was the most important political figure in Lebanon since the end of   the 15-year civil war that tore the country apart.

Born into a modest peasant family in the southern port city of Sidon in 1945, he became one of the region's wealthiest and most influential men.

Starting out as an accountant, Hariri studied commerce, before moving to Saudi Arabia and making his fortune in construction. He built crucial ties with the Saudi monarchy along the way and received Saudi citizenship in 1987.

He ran a commercial empire that spanned computers, banking, insurance, real estate and television and was the majority owner of Lebanon's Future Television. His close relations with Saudi Arabia's oil-rich leaders helped him in his efforts to rebuild Lebanon after the civil war.

Hariri, a Sunni Arab, was a central figure in securing the Al-Taif peace agreement that ended the conflict, which pitted the country's religious parties against one another. Israel backed the Christians while Syria supported both Sunnis and Shias.

He first became prime minister in October 1992, and set about restoring national confidence in the Lebanese economy and bolstering the country's burgeoning business community. In 1998, he lost his post after a squabble with the then Lebanese President, Elias Hrawi, over how to resolve the country's ailing economy.

Hariri was asked to form a new government in October 2000 after he won landslide majority in the general elections. After four years in power he resigned last October, in a row over the extent of Syria's involvement in Lebanon's internal politics.

He quit after the presidency of Emile Lahoud was artificially extended by three years, thanks to a Syrian-backed constitutional amendment that Hariri had opposed.

The extension was in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 1559 adopted on September 2, 2004, calling for a withdrawal of Syrian troops and for Lebanese presidential elections to be held. Although Hariri had publicly tried to avoid offending Damascus, his pro-Syrian opponents accused him of being the driving force behind the resolution.

Syria has some 15,000 troops in Lebanon and influences virtually all key political decisions. It was invited into the country to provide security during the war and has never released its grip.

After stepping down as Prime Minister last year, Hariri had kept himself largely on the sidelines. But in the eyes of many he remained the "silent opponent" to Lebanon’s current pro-Syrian government.

His vast fortune, estimated at US$4 billion (£2.1billion), allowed him to maintain an independent political posture without defying Syria.

Members of Hariri’s parliamentary bloc had also been taking part in opposition meetings, calling on Syria to extract its soldiers from Lebanon.

The politician is survived by his wife, Nazik Hariri, and six children.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article514418.ece

November 23, 2006

Profile: Pierre Gemayel

Political leader who opposed Syrian influence in Lebanon

September 23, 1972 - November 21, 2006

 Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon’s Industry Minister, was his country’s youngest MP, a rising star in his party and the scion of the Gemayel political dynasty. He was the fifth prominent anti-Syrian political figure to be killed since the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.

Born in Bekfaya in 1972, Pierre Gemayel was the son of a former Lebanese President, Amine Gemayel, and a leader of Lebanon’s Maronite Christian community. A lawyer by profession, he was elected to parliament in 2000 and 2005.

He was a prominent leader of the Christian Phalange Party founded by his grandfather, also Pierre Gemayel, a leader in the movement for independence from the French in the 1930s. Universally known as “Sheikh Pierre”, he died in 1984.

Gemayel was among the Lebanese cabinet members who voted recently to support the international tribunal established to investigate the Hariri assassination, widely blamed on Syria. Syria denied involvement, but Hariri’s death aroused massive Lebanese public protests against Damascus and resulted in the withdrawal of the Syrian forces that had been stationed in Lebanon for 20 years.

In the political upheaval that followed, an anti-Syrian coalition formed a majority in Parliament, supported by both Christians and Muslims and viewed as being pro-Western. It was opposed by the Syrian and Iranian-backed Shia Hezbollah party.

Lebanese law requires the dissolution of the government if one third of the 24 member Cabinet resign or become unavailable. It has been speculated that Gemayel’s assassination was an attempt by pro-Syrian groups to reach the required third, and so force the current Government from power. With the recent resignation of six Hezbollah MPs from the Cabinet, added to Gemayel’s death, the resignation or death of only two more ministers would topple the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Gemayel was a key figure in Siniora’s cabinet. A soft-spoken presence, he was seen as a moderate voice in the Maronite Christian camp which lost much of its power during the 1975-90 civil war, and has been weakened since then by infighting.

Gemayel met his death at 34, the age that his uncle, Bashir Gemayel, was killed in a huge explosion in 1982, after being elected president but before taking office. Bashir Gemayel had been the Commander of the Christian militia known as the Lebanese Forces.

After this assassination his brother, Amine, Pierre Gemayel’s father, became President. He oversaw the decline of his nation and the erosion of the influence of the Lebanese Christians during the harsh final years of the civil war.

Effective exercise of the presidency proved an almost impossible task with foreign armies, those of Syria and Israel, occupying two thirds of the country, and private militias fighting each other for control of the remainder. Taxes could not be collected, anarchy prevailed. In 1988 Amine was barred from standing for re-election. He then went into exile for 12 years, hoping his absence would help to heal divisions in Lebanon.

Pierre Gemayel was 10 when his father became President in 1982. He did not accompany him into exile. In 1999, with Amine still barred from Lebanon, he married his wife, Patricia Daif, a Lebanese Christian in Limassol, Cyprus, so that his father could attend.

He is survived by her and by two sons.

Pierre Gemayel, politician, was born on September 23, 1972. He was assassinated on November 21, 2006, aged 34

by Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article646007.ece

Profile: Walid Eido

 FACTBOX-Five facts about slain Lebanese MP Walid Eido

13 Jun 2007 17:10:20 GMT

Source: Reuters

June 13 (Reuters) - Lebanese anti-Syrian member of parliament Walid Eido was killed on Wednesday after a bomb targeted his car near Beirut's popular seafront in the Sunni Muslim western part of the city.

One of Eido's sons was also killed in the blast in which eight other people were killed and 11 were wounded.

Here are five facts about Eido:

* Born in 1942 in Beirut, he graduated in 1966 and became a magistrate a year later. In the late 1990s he was north Lebanon's public prosecutor. Eido won a seat in parliamentary elections in 2000 and 2005 and was a member of several parliamentary committees.

* Eido was a Sunni Muslim and a member of the majority anti-Syrian parliamentary bloc of Saad al-Hariri, which controls Lebanon's Western-backed government.

* He was a vocal opponent of Syrian influence in Lebanon and an ally of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri before his assassination by a massive car bomb in February 2005.

* Eido used to be a member of the Sunni Murabetoun militia during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

* He was an avid swimmer and the bomb exploded outside his favourite Beirut beach resort, Sporting Club.