Middle East News
Arab League delegation continues talks with "optimism" (Roundup)
By DPA
May 14, 2008, 20:00 GMT

Beirut -An Arab League delegation late Wednesday continued talks with Lebanese rivals in a bid to reach a settlement to deadly sectarian clashes that have driven Lebanon close to civil war.

'The delegation is continuing its talks with the Lebanese rivals with optimism,' a member close to the Arab delegation told Deutsche Press-Agentur dpa.

The team, headed by Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani and Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa, held talks with Lebanon's House Speaker Nabih Berri, premier Fouad Seniora, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Opposition Christian leader Michela Aoun, Majority Leader Saad Hariri, former president Amin Gemayel and Lebanese forces' Christian leader Samir Geagea.

The delegation had issued no statements since their arrival in Beirut.

The tension between the opposition and the majority erupted after the government said it would investigate a Hezbollah telephone network and reassign airport security chief Colonel Wafik Chouckair over his alleged links to Hezbollah.

Clashes turned deadly last Thursday after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused the government of declaring war against his party with the investigation.

The showdown saw Hezbollah gunmen seize large parts of west Beirut last week, plunging an already fragile nation into fear and uncertainty.

Opposition gunmen withdrew from Beirut's streets on Saturday after the army acted to overturn the decisions.

'The biggest problem that we need to tackle is Hezbollah's relations with the state of Lebanon,' said Geagea, who described the talks led by Arab leaders as 'objective' and 'fruitful.'

'There is no need to withdraw the two government decisions,' Geagea said, stressing that he preferred dialogue within Lebanon to talks outside the country.

Reports indicated that the Arab delegation is keen to invite the Lebanese factions to Qatar to sit around a dialogue table.

Topping the agenda of the Arab delegation that arrived to Beirut earlier Wednesday, is an to end an anti-government protest campaign by Hezbollah militants and their allies that has led to the shutdown of a number of major roads in Lebanon, including the highway to the airport.

No commercial flights have been scheduled from the country's only international airport for the seventh straight day, an airport official said.

There was speculation that the government would decide at a meeting later Wednesday to reverse its recent controversial decisions concerning the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah, which triggered the latest turmoil.

The sectarian fighting is the worst since the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990 and has left at least 82 people dead and around 250 wounded in six bloody days.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said last Thursday that the government action amounted to a declaration of war and within hours his fighters and their allies had taken over large swathes of Sunni areas in west Beirut.

The fighters withdrew at the weekend after the army moved in.

However, the opposition said some roads, including the ones to the airport, would remain shut as part of a civil disobedience campaign that would only be lifted when the government officially rescinds its decisions.

Meanwhile, a relative calm has settled over the country since Tuesday after the army said it was ready to use force to restore order.

US President George W Bush, who arrived in Israel on Wednesday, warned Iran and Syria on the eve of his trip that the international community would not allow Lebanon to fall under foreign domination again and vowed to speed up military aide to the Lebanese army.