French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner began his visit to Beirut at the weekend by crashing a wedding party and dancing the dabke, the traditional Lebanese dance, with the bridal couple.Kouchner was dining at a fish restaurant in the Lebanese capital with friends and decided to pay a visit late Friday to the bridal party next door where he stayed for about 20 minutes. He was pictured on the front-page of a Lebanese paper on Saturday clapping and smiling from ear-to-ear as the bride belly-danced before about 500 guests. "He is a bon-vivant and he was very happy to spend a little time at the wedding," Kamel Mohanna, a close friend of Kouchner's who was dining with the minister and knew the bridal couple, said.
| "Be happy, be healthy, long life. It takes a wedding to make us say, let's live another day, drink l'chaim, to life!" |