Plus the US Assistant Secretary learned he
would not be granted a meeting with Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman as
payback for Feltman snubbing Sulieman and his wife Wafaa during his recent
visit to Washington. Feltman's refusal to meet with Lebanon's President was
explained as being punishment for Sulieman being suspected of being too close
to Hezbollah politically.
In fairness to Feltman, he did make a point of telling the media that the US is interested in Sleiman's view of the region's developments. He added that he thinks Sleiman has a good point of view regarding the situation in Syria, and how best to protect Lebanon and he would welcome a chance to sit with Lebanon's President. Sleiman didn't bite and refused to meet with Jeff, whose snub in Washington also hurt the feelings of Sleiman's gracious wife Wafaa who according to Serail gossip not only bought two new outfits for anticipated social events but reportedly ended up at one point having to settle for carry-out Chinese food from DC's China town and got indigestion. And it was all Jeff's fault.
In reality, Feltman is visiting Beirut to put new conditions on the Lebanese
government after Lebanon paid its share of funds to the Special Tribunal for
Lebanon. His visit comes following months of criticism by Washington over
Lebanon's failure to agree on a plan to fund a U.N.-backed tribunal probing the
assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and repeated warnings to
Lebanon about adhering to sanctions on neighboring Syria.
Feltman said in an interview published on
12/6/11 that Prime Minister Najib Mikati's decision to transfer Lebanon's share
of funds to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is in the interest of
Lebanon. In fact, Feltman, like the March 14th team, was not at all
happy with Lebanon transferring the STL funding but was hoping that Lebanon's
government would not send the $ 32,000,000, being its 49% share of the STL
budget, and that the government would be forced to resign.
A view Feltman partially shared with Hezbollah but for different reasons.
Feltman's pals at the US Treasury Department
planned to grab and squeeze Lebanon where it hurts most" sanctions on Lebanon's
banking system which is currently making a financial killing given banking
ramifications of the crisis in Syria. Lebanon has traditionally been a refuge
for Syrian money laundering. Today, the US is threatening Lebanese banks, and
has sent Treasury officials to Beirut with instructions for Lebanese banks to
scrutinize Syrian accounts like never before.
Just last month, Feltman threatened Prime
Minister Miqati with Chapter 7 Security Council sanctions on Lebanon if it had
failed to fund the STL. Feltman reportedly carried a list of those sanctions in
his jacket pocket much like Philip Habib used to do when the Reagan
administration made fake promises to the PLO, some of which Arafat fell for, to
get the Palestinian forces to leave Beirut in the summer of 1982.
It seems that every Christmas season has its
bleak aspects for most of us including for a self-clamed optimistic like
Assistant Secretary Feltman. As recently as Halloween he was predicting major
bad times for Hezbollah because as the claimed organizer of the Special
Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), he reportedly was quite confident that "the
Terrorist government of Hezbollah will collapse over the STL funding issue" and
Feltman's March 14th team would be back running things.
So faced with that disappointment, since
Hezbollah is still very much the main pillar of the Lebanese government, what
was Feltman to do? He could do what he always does and that is the make boring
rounds of the same Lebanese officials with US Ambassador Connelly in tow. He
saw Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who genuinely likes Jeffrey and organized a
lunch for him, and Parliament Speaker, Nabi Berri. Both were outed early this
year by wilkileaks as being quite comfortable with Jeff's view of the political
situation in Lebanon and both having raised eyebrows earlier this year by
seemingly dissing Hezbollah and appearing to root for Israel during its 2006
aggression. Jumblatt admitted wilkileaks was accurate in the cables it leaked
while Berri denied the truth of the cables concerning him. This year, both
Jumblatt and Berri were reportedly quite shy about revealing some of their
personal views to Feltman as they worried that their confidential statements
may appear in print if wilkileaks somehow manages to stay in business.
To further fill in his schedule this year, Jeffrey held a news conference and again announced that the US favored the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon and was opposed to any outside interference. Many yawned at that statement. Then he promised to support the Lebanese army. More yawns again since Lebanon has heard all this so many times before with zero results and as one fellow wrote the Beirut Daily Star this morning, " the US call keep their 1960 model M-16's and Hueys and rusting tanks! We don't want them."
Finally Jeff presented the gift that he must have thought Lebanon would really
like this season. He announced that the US would help Lebanon protect its
borders from foreign intervention. But every school kid here knows the US does
not mean protection from Israel but only from Syria so the Lebanese reaction
was once again less than appreciative.
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