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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Report: 4 Ministers Turn Down Requests from Bellemare who is Mulling Measures Against them |
| 2011-03-03 |
| [An Nahar] Four caretaker ministers have turned down requests from the Special Tribunal for Leb prosecutor to provide information and documents, in breach of the cooperation protocol signed with the U.N., sources close to the STL told the English-language The Daily Star. The requests made by Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare were sent last month from his office in Beirut to caretaker Premier Saad Hariri, who passed them on to Ministers Ghazi Aridi, Jebran Bassil, Ziad Baroud and Charbel Nahhas on February 24, the newspaper said Tuesday. But the four ministers have not yet complied with the requests, the sources told The Daily Star. The STL has requested a meeting with Leb's ambassador to The Hague, Zeidan Saghir, on March 7 to discuss the issue, they said. According to the daily, Bellemare is mulling to take measures against the ministers who declined to cooperate with him, such as listing them by name as uncooperative. "In his letter to Aridi, Hariri urged the caretaker minister to permit U.N. Sherlocks to question some ministry employees as witnesses and provide the requested documents as soon as possible in accordance with the Lebanese government's commitment to cooperate with the STL," The Daily Star said. "In his letter to Bassil, Hariri reminded the caretaker energy minister in his capacity as former telecommunications minister that the Lebanese government and relevant authorities must facilitate the tribunal's work and prevent the obstruction of the course of justice," it added. Hariri urged Baroud to help Bellemare's Beirut office obtain some information and documents at the departments of the interior ministry and told Nahhas to act immediately to provide the requested telecommunications data to the STL. The daily quoted parliamentary sources as saying that Nahhas had told Speaker Nabih KnobbyBerri ... the Hizbullah sock puppet ... that he had stopped meeting the demands of the U.N. commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's liquidation since last year's speech by Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in which he called on the Lebanese government and officials to boycott the STL and not cooperate with the commission. Nahhas explained to Berri that Bellemare had requested comprehensive information about telephone conversations among the Lebanese, including ministers and MPs, and that this violated the public freedom and eavesdropping law, the sources said. He confirmed to AFP on Wednesday that he did not comply with Bellemare's request for information "until the legal debate over the STL is settled at Cabinet." He revealed that he had been receiving requests by the tribunal over telephone calls between Lebanese citizens conducted seven years ago. He explained that such requests contradict "Lebanese laws on the privacy of phone calls, as well as the immunity of MPs, presidents, and other individuals" which drove him to relay the demand to the Cabinet for it to take a decision over the issue. The government however is incapable of tackling the matter as because it is still a caretaker cabinet. The minister continued by saying that he had received a request by Hariri to comply with the STL's demands, adding that had also relayed these requests to Cabinet. Asked whether the cooperation protocol between the STL and Leb does not include him, Nahhas replied: "There is a protocol, as well as laws and the constitution and we are responsible for applying the laws." "The cooperation protocol does not eliminate everything, and when affairs require clarifications, they should be sent to Cabinet," he added. |
| Posted by:Fred |