 The chief of the Lebanese Shia movement Hizballah has said the UN report into the murder of ex-premier Rafiq al-Hariri must not take any political side, warning of dangerous consequences.
| Sounds like a threat, doesn't it? |
"We fear that the Mehlis report could be politicised as this is a report that will have dangerous repercussions since the crime is serious," Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah told supporters in Beirut on Thursday.
| Afraid people are gonna recall the pro-Syria demonstrations Hezbollah staged right after the kaboom? |
Nasrallah was speaking as the UN investigator probing Hariri's murder, Detlev Mehlis, handed over his report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York. The document could be made public on Friday.
| ... and he didn't have the good sense to keep his mouth shut and his head down. |
"We want to have clear and irrefutable conclusions," said Nasrallah. "We are in favour of the criminals being punished whatever their identity."
| Except that he's hoping the conclusions are susceptible to being muddied. |
The UN chief said on Wednesday that the Mehlis report would be a purely "technical" one and warned against attempts to politicise it. Annan also appealed for calm and restraint in anticipation of the inevitable political fallout.
| Of course it's going to be "politicized." Syria's occupation of Leb was a political act. Ruling Leb as a colony was a political act. The intricate, but probably not stately, minuet that's going to follow in the next month is going to be exclusively political — unless Hezbollah decides to blow something up, in which case it'll become military. |
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