حزب الإصلاح السوري

Lebanese Pro-Government Parties Plan Demonstration against UN Resolution

Washington DC, November 30, 2004/AP News/ -- Backed by the government, Hezbollah and other factions mobilized Monday for a massive demonstration in Beirut to show loyalty to Damascus and protest a UN resolution that demanded Syria leave Lebanon alone.

The Lebanese government sees Tuesday's planned protest, expected by organizers to draw a million people, as a public rejection of UN interference, which it warns could reignite the civil war. But opposition politicians say such a display is orchestrated and they warn of the consequences of defying the United Nations.

Organizers have hired thousands of vehicles to carry their supporters and the government was preparing to put 3,000 security officers on Beirut's streets for the demonstration. Some schools were given the day off Tuesday. The U.S. Embassy, in a warden message, told American citizens to avoid the areas where demonstrations are taking place.

People were urged through loudspeakers mounted on vehicles touring city streets late Monday to join the demonstration "to confront the American-Zionist conspiracy."

The political groups behind the demonstration claim it will dwarf one last week protesting Syria's dominance.

That protest drew some 3,000 Lebanese students and activists who peacefully protested Syria's domination of their country and the 14,000 troops it has deployed here.

The counter-protesters support Lebanon's and Syria's official line that the troops ensure stability 13 years after Lebanon's sectarian civil war ended, and that a U.S. and French-sponsored UN resolution adopted in September amounted to interference in the two neighbors' affairs.

The September 2 resolution effectively demanded that Syria withdraw its troops and stop interfering in Lebanese politics.

The resolution also called on the Lebanese government to dismantle Hezbollah.

The street action comes as another display of loyalty to Damascus. Showing the world the massive opposition to the UN measure also serves the Lebanese government's case.

But opposition members shot back: "We are free people and they (demonstrators) are being directed," said Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the most prominent opponent of the government.

Syria's army crossed into Lebanon in 1976 in the second year of its civil war. By the end of the conflict in 1990, Syria had emerged as the main power broker in the country.

Muslims, who make up a majority, and pro-government groups dismiss the resolution as "a flagrant interference" in Lebanon's internal affairs and vow to resist it.

Anti-Syrian Christian opposition parties defend the UN motion as the only way to put an end to Syrian dominance.

Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, head of the influential Maronite Catholic Church, has warned of tit-for-tat sectarian street protests. "Facing a challenge with a challenge is the nearest way to destruction and ruin," Sfeir said in his sermon Sunday.

In a bid to allay such concerns, a Hezbollah delegation assured Sfeir on Monday that Tuesday's demonstration was aimed at foreign interference in Lebanon's affairs, not Lebanon's Christians.

 Reform Party of Syria