Backing Away from the Brink

The Saudi-Iranian Summit, billed by participants as an effort to reduce sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East, may soon pay peace dividends in Lebanon. Lebanese politicians from both sides of the three-month standoff between the Sunni-led government and the Shia-led opposition say that an agreement is nigh that will end the country's most serious crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

So far no one is talking specifics, but the two main issues that have divided the Saudi and American-backed government from the Iranian and Syrian-backed opposition have been the breakdown of cabinet seats, and the formation of a international tribunal to investigate and try suspects in the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

One compromise proposal that has been floating around would give the Hizballah-led opposition greater representation in the government without giving them veto power over cabinet decisions, perhaps by designating one seat for a neutral minister (if a neutral politician can be found.)

But the tribunal is a tricker issue. Preliminary UN reports have implicated Syrian officials in Hariri's death. And pro-government politicians hope that a tribunal will help them rid Lebanon of the last vestiges of Syrian rule, which ended in 2005.

So even if Iran has given Hizballah the green light to accept a functional tribunal in some form, Syria is unlikely to back down so easily. And the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has ample ability to rain on the peace parade. Syria shares a long porous border with Lebanon, and almost certainly left intelligence operatives in Lebanon when its army departed. Unexploded bombs and detonators keep turning up on the streets of Beirut and South Lebanon, a warning perhaps of things to come.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut