Syria News Wire

Lebanon is to complain to Syria about delays entering Syria along the Beirut-Damascus highway. The delay has been caused by Syrian officials, who are being more thorough in their border checks. Until the military withdrawal, the Syrian side of the border had been the easiest to negotiate – a quick wave of the hand and [...]

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Fuad Siniora, a former finance minister under Rafiq Al-Hariri, is expected to be announced as the country’s new Prime Minister soon. He received the support of Saad Al-Hariri’s Future coalition, which have a majority in Parliament. Today’s news confirms expectations that inexperienced Saad will not run for PM just yet. But it also raises fears [...]

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Lebanon has removed some of the draconian restrictions on Palestinians in the country, allowing them to work for the first time. But it’ll only apply to Palestinians born in Lebanon, only if they’re under 57, and only in some manual labour and clerical jobs in the private-sector. They still wont be allowed to go anywhere [...]

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Israel has claimed that Syrian troops fired on Israeli soldiers in the illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The UN’s 1000 strong force along the dividing line could not confirm the Israeli account. More inexplicably, the gung-ho Occupation soldiers chose not to return fire. They claimed they were reparing a fence on the border of the [...]

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During the massive protests in the wake of the murder of Rafiq Al-Hariri, the Lebanese economy was incredibly stable. The Lira barely felt the shock of the political turmoil. But new reports suggest the Lebanese government spent two billion dollars holding the Lira up. That’s two billion pounds to add to the current debt of [...]

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The US has criticised the fairness of Lebanon’s election, because a handful of the new MPs are pro-Syria. Meanwhile, European and UN monitors praised the election as being free, fair and peaceful, although they said that the constituency sizes need to be reviewed. Saad Al-Hariri’s Future coalition won 72 out of 128 seats, making it [...]

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A number of Syrian workers have been arrested in connection with this morning’s killing of George Hawi. Maybe this shows that the Lebanese Police are doing their job well for once. They were criticised for their abject failures in the aftermath of the Hariri bomb – they damaged and lost evidence, and came up with [...]

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George Hawi, former leader of Lebanon’s Communist Party, has been killed by a car bomb in Wata Musaitbi at 10 o’clock this morning. He is the third person to be targetted in Beirut in recent months, following the killings of Rafiq Al-Hariri and Samir Qassir. Expect Syria to be blamed. But isn’t that far too [...]

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After the fourth and final round of voting in Lebanon, Saad Al-Hariri’s Future Bloc has claimed victory. His party claims to have secured an absolute majority in parliament. But what’s not so clear is how the bloc can be labelled the ‘opposition’. He is aligned with mecurial Walid Jumblatt as well as Hezbollah and right-wing [...]

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Syria and Iraq are discussing a UN presence along the contentious border. They want to create a buffer zone policed by UN troops. The move comes after Syria and the US severed all intelligence co-operation. Iyad Alawi – Iraq’s former PM, and unoffical Iraqi envoy to Damascus – says Bashar has made positive sounds in [...]

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