Der Spiegel Report: "Shameful Lie Written in Lebanon"

Hussein Assi
Source: almanar.com.lb, 27-5-2009

For the third consecutive day, Lebanese politicians continued to reject the report published by the German weekly Der Spiegel concerning an alleged involvement of Hizbullah in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as an attempt to provoke sedition in the country.

In this context, Youth and Sports Minister Talal Areslan warned that the report published in the German daily was an introduction for engaging Lebanon in another four-year "maze" after four years of managing the accusations in only one direction.

Areslan agreed with Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah that the Der Spiegel accusation was an "Israeli" accusation per excellence. "They are seeking to set the country on fire," Areslan warned, adding that "they want to return the sectarian conflicts to the political scene and therefore, they are searching for another victim."

Former Prime Minister Salim Hoss slammed in turn the report on Wednesday as a shameful lie, thanking God because no one believed such a lie. Hoss said that the fabricated lie published in Der Spiegel aimed at achieving two main goals: provoking sedition in Lebanon and the Arab regions and seeking to torpedo the forthcoming parliamentary elections, or at least to influence its outcome.

The former Prime Minister called on the political Lebanese authority to search out the source of such destroying lie. "If the source turns to be internal, the Lebanese authorities should take the appropriate procedures," Hoss pointed out.

Meanwhile, former minister Mohsen Dalloul said that the Der Spiegel report was fabricated in Beirut, calling on the officials in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) to contact him in order to know more details. Dalloul stressed that the main goal of the report was to provoke sedition between Sunnites and Shiites in Lebanon.