France stresses its role in preventing war between Lebanon, Israel

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BEIRUT, March 7 (Xinhua) -- France's Ambassador to Lebanon Bernard Foucher stressed that his country's participation in the United Nation Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFI) aims at preventing a new war between Lebanon and Israel and strengthening security in the region, the National News Agency (NNA) said Wednesday. "We are present in south Lebanon to strengthen security and prevent the outbreak of wars threatening the region and the world," Foucher said during a reception organized by the French embassy in Beirut on Tuesday evening. The diplomat said that in the south of Litani, the goal of the international community remained so that the Lebanese government could progressively exercise full sovereignty over the entire territory. "It is wrong to think that France is not doing enough for Lebanon; France has always supported the Lebanese," he said. "As we approach Rome II conference, our gathering will be a symbol of our commitment to a united and strong Lebanese state," the French diplomat said

WHO IS GEORGE NADER?

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BY MAX KUTNER  - newsweek -- A “shadowy” Lebanese-American businessman spent decades ingratiating himself with people in power in D.C. and across the Middle East before reportedly surfacing in the special counsel’s Russia probe. George Nader, 58, has been questioned by Robert Mueller’s team about his ties to the United Arab Emirates, the New York Times reported Saturday. The special counsel’s team is reportedly looking into Nader’s ties to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, and whether the Emiratis tried to buy influence in the Trump White House. Before he became the latest subject of intrigue relating to Mueller’s probe, Nader ran a magazine on Middle East policy and positioned himself as a go-between in Middle East peace negotiations. Interviews with more than two dozen friends and associates of Nader illustrate a mysterious man who by some accounts has for decades quietly aided people in power, or by other accounts is a huckster always looking for a new way in. “He wanted to be a player,” Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Program at the Institute of World Affairs, told Newsweek. Nader faded from the public eye in the early 2000s, only resurfacing in the recent reports.

Nader was born and raised in Lebanon before moving to the United States as a teen. He didn’t know any English other than “Hello” and “How are you?” according to a 2000 profile about him in Lebanon’s The Daily Star. Nader went on to attend Cleveland State University. But he didn’t last: Nader dropped out in 1980, according to a 1981 article, to start International Insight Inc. and a magazine of the same name. It was soon renamed Middle East Insight. The journal sought to “provide a spectrum of views on the Middle East, to enlighten public opinion and to promote better understanding between the American people and the peoples of the Middle East,” according to its website. Middle East Insight became well-known in policy circles, though insiders debate its level of influence and its motivations. At its height, the magazine featured original interviews with U.S. lawmakers including Senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and then-Senator Joe Biden. Nader’s writers also interviewed world leaders such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and a who’s who of Middle Eastern leaders, including Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Nader’s conferences appeared on C-SPAN; Then-U.S. Representative Nick Rahall once praised the magazine as “comprehensive, insightful and balanced.”

Nader seemed to have a knack for connections. In 1987, he found himself amid Afghan mujahideen, Egyptian Islamic fundamentalists and Hezbollah leaders in the home of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then the supreme leader of Iran. Nader was the only Western journalist, and he knew his presence there was unusual. “We were silent, except for those who wept,” Nader wrote in an article for The Washington Post three months later. “Each was conscious of the powerful presence of a man who had dramatically changed the history of the last quarter of this century and perhaps beyond.” He developed a reputation as a “shadowy” figure, said Shibley Telhami, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor at the University of Maryland. “It was hard to know if he had a political agenda, whether this was a political opportunist or whether he was trying to make money,” he said. “He wanted to connect with power and clearly reach out to people he thought were power players.” Other times, he would use those connections to offer services. Nader showed up at Israeli government offices, said Nimrod Novik, then the chief adviser on foreign policy to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, dropping names and offering to connect the Israelis with the Syrians and the Lebanese. The offers “never fully materialized,” Novik told Newsweek. But sometimes they did. During the Clinton administration, Nader had connections to people at high levels of both Israeli and Arab governments, which was unusual at the time because of tensions between Israel and Lebanon. “He wanted to put himself as a useful go-between, as a useful carrier of messages, and he did that successfully between Syrians and Israelis,” said Hisham Melhem, a columnist for the Lebanese daily An-Nahar and a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Melhem recalled that Nader arranged the first interview between Syria’s former foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa and Israeli television. Multiple efforts to reach Nader for comment by phone and mail were unsuccessful.

In the late 1990s, he helped lead back-channel negotiations between Syria and Israel, Daniel Pipes, a writer and academic known for his controversial views on Islam, wrote in The New Republic in 1999. Nader brought the Syrian views to the table, while Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics company executive and former U.S. ambassador to Austria, brought the Israeli views, according to Pipes. But Nader also had ties to pro-Israel interests: Jonathan Kessler, who worked under Nader as executive editor of Middle East Insight, had come from the lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). (Multiple attempts to reach Kessler, who returned to work at AIPAC, were unsuccessful.) And then, in the early 2000s, Nader and Middle East Insight disappeared. “Poof,” said Melhem, the Lebanese columnist. “He was gone…. He just disappeared completely without saying goodbye to anybody I know.” Associates said they stopped hearing from him or seeing him around Washington. The business license for his company dissolved and his website went offline, its archives with it. There were rumors that he fled the country or moved back to Lebanon. “Last time I heard from him was after the American invasion of Iraq, when he called me from Kurdistan to discuss an article I wrote,” Melhem said. Nader was away for so long that a bank foreclosed on his Washington apartment, according to court records and his lawyer at the time, Carol Blumenthal. A couple bought the apartment through the foreclosure process; Blumenthal said the couple moved in and tossed Nader’s stuff to the curb. (Nader took the couple to court in 2003, and eventually won his apartment back. He still owned the unit as of late February, according to property records.)

When he stepped away from the publishing world, Nader appears to have gone deeper into dealmaking. Nader reportedly tried to leverage his ties to Syrian officials into contacts with the Obama administration, and later became an adviser to bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, the Times reported. The Emirati prince allegedly also met with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe in December 2016. Bin Zayed allegedly helped coordinate another meeting, between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian national, for the purpose of establishing unofficial lines of communication between the Trump operation and Russia. (In testimony before congressional investigators, Prince denied the allegations.) Prince once hired Nader, the bin Zayed’s supposed adviser, as a “business development consultant” in Iraq, the Times reported. Nader introduced bin Zayed to Elliott Broidy, a top Trump fundraiser and the owner of a private security company, according to the Times. Broidy’s security company reportedly later signed contracts with the United Arab Emirates. Last October, Broidy provided Nader with a memorandum about a sit-down he had with Trump, during which they discussed Trump’s possibly meeting privately with bin Zayed, according to the Times. All the while, Nader didn’t reach out to former colleagues in D.C., who told Newsweek they hadn’t heard from him in years. The Times reported that he’d made connections in the George W. Bush and possibly the Obama administrations, but multiple foreign policy advisers from both told Newsweek they had never heard of him. Nader appeared to have escaped the public eye until the news outlet Axios first reported about his White House visits in January. The report described Nader as an “associate” of Bannon who also met with Kushner. But four people close to Bannon told Newsweek they didn’t know about him. A publicist for Bannon did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the White House. A spokesman for Kushner wouldn’t comment, and his lawyer did not respond to a request. But those who knew Nader said any involvement he might have in the current administration did not surprise them. As Novik, the former Israeli adviser, put it, “That’s the way he does [it]. He found a new angle.”

Lebanese dollar reserves recover from last year's crisis

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BEIRUT, (Reuters) Reporting by Lisa Barrington; editing by Larry King - The Lebanese central bank’s dollar reserves grew in early 2018, recovering from a decline during a political crisis last year that pushed up interest rates, its governor said on Tuesday. Reserves climbed by $1.4 billion in the first two months of the year and total assets in dollars exceeded $43 billion, Governor Riad Salameh said at an economic conference in Beirut. “With the rise of interest rates and the return of political issues to normal, the dollar reserves at the central bank rose,” he said. November’s political crisis was triggered by the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri during a trip to Saudi Arabia, before he returned to the country and resumed his role. The crisis raised questions about Lebanon’s economic stability and put pressure on the Lebanese pound’s peg to the dollar. Lebanon has one of the world’s most indebted governments measured against the size of its economy. Growth has been slowed by war in neighbouring Syria and years of internal political disputes. The economy relies on the confidence of millions of expatriate Lebanese who deposit into local banks. The banks buy government debt, which finances the expanding budget deficit and debt.

The International Monetary Fund last month strongly criticised Lebanon’s unsustainable debt trajectory and said there was an “urgent need” for government policy to stabilise and then reduce public debt as a share of gross domestic product. Hoping to stimulate its economy, Lebanon this year is seeking up to $16 billion in infrastructure investment from international donors who hope to ward off more Middle East instability, in a country that hosts more than a million Syrian refugees. “It is no secret that the economic situation in Lebanon today is difficult and that we face big challenges,” Hariri told the conference. “Growth rates are low, unemployment rates have exceeded 30 per cent, poverty rates are increasing, the balance of payments suffers a deficit, public debt is rising at a rapid rate and has exceeded $80 billion and the treasury deficit has reached unsustainable levels,” he added.

During November’s turmoil, some Lebanese rushed for dollars; data shows central bank foreign assets fell by $1.6 billion that month. Salameh told Reuters on the conference’s sidelines that November’s increase in local currency interest rates of around 2 percentage points — a result of the political crisis — had been enough to iron out market imbalances, “therefore we have an outlook of stable interest rates”. The government passed a state budget last year for the first time since 2005 and has pledged to agree a 2018 budget before April 6, when France will host a donor conference to support Lebanon. Tuesday’s conference, organised by Lebanese business magazine Al-Iktissad Wal-Aamal in cooperation with Hariri’s office, was a roadshow for Lebanon’s infrastructure investment plans ahead of April’s Paris conference.

Nizar Zakka to run for parliamentary elections says lawyer

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The Daily Star BEIRUT: Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese citizen detained in Iran, will submit his candidacy for the upcoming parliamentary elections, a statement from his lawyer reported Monday. At 2 p.m. Tuesday, representatives of Zakka including his brother will submit the request for candidacy and the corresponding documents, the statement released by Zakka’s lawyer Antoine Abou Dib said. The statement called on members of the press to be present when the candidacy is submitted, “to be the voice of the oppressed Lebanese, especially those unjustly detained or abducted abroad.” Zakka, a dual Lebanese-American citizen, was arrested after traveling to Iran to attend a state-sponsored conference in Tehran in 2015. At the time of his arrest, he was the secretary-general of IJMA3, an Arab communications organization, and had received an official invitation to visit Iran. Lebanese officials and leaders, including President Michel Aoun and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, have since highlighted the government’s ongoing efforts to secure Zakka’s release.

Fast food chains might be your healthiest meal options at airports — and it has a lot to do with germs

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by  Tehrene Firman, Well+Good  -- Being healthy at the airport can be a true struggle: It's a stressful place, there are germs everywhere, and the nutritious food offerings seem slim to none (though, to be fair, advancements are progressing on that front). And to make sure you're eating as healthy as possible, you might, shockingly, want to stick to fast food. Did you audibly gasp at that news? Well, don't worry, because #same. Fast food might seem like the least healthy choice of the bunch, but it's actually a much safer bet than salads of fresh fruits and veggies. Unfortunately, according to "Money," those typically healthy finds emerge from airport kitchens that might not optimally sanitary due to the speed at which they work. Furthermore, it's unclear how the fresh foods are transported into the terminal and exactly how long they've been there. All of this provides for a higher risk of ingesting sickness-causing bacteria, meaning you should stick to the cooked stuff at airport restaurants, if possible.

Shake Shack Shake Shack would be a smart option for you before your next flight. Ciara Appelbaum Buffets are another no-go, even if it's seemingly safe-to-eat cooked options like pizza or pasta. Those items might be sitting on heated pans and warmed trays for hours on end (unless the place is popular and super-busy, and the food is restocked more often to fill demand — but do you really want to make that judgment call?). Really, your best for finding bacteria-free, healthy-to-eat airport food is fast-food chains. Because brands like Shake Shack, Potbelly, Chili's, and other fast-casual restaurants have a reputation and standards to uphold, they want to keep customers happy and do so by making sure their airport food tastes just as good as and is prepared as it would be in its normal restaurants. And if you can't decide on an option from one of those purveyors that'll make you feel nutritionally satisfied for the remainder of your travels, just order a smorgasbord of healthy sides to tide you over until you're back in your own perfectly stocked kitchen.

Lebanon: Saad Hariri’s Impossible Choice

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Article represents opinion of the Author 

by Aurélie Daher   lobelog.com --   One could say: “What a difference!” Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is back in Riyadh this week, for the first time since he announced from the Saudi capital his canceled-two-weeks-later “resignation” last November. So far, things look all lovey-dovey again between the kingdom and its Lebanese Sunni protégé. Could that mean that Riyadh has learned its lesson from what many saw as a major strategic mistake by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS)? Does Hariri himself feel more confident facing his regional godfather? Things are not so easy to decipher, although much is at stake. A quick reminder. On November 3 last year, Saad Hariri was “urgently invited” to Riyadh where he was expected to meet King Salman bin Abdel Aziz for a “work meeting.” The very next day, he announced his resignation from his job as prime minister—and vehemently assailed both Iran and Hezbollah, whom he accused of “planning to assassinate him.” Both the news of the resignation and the aggressive tone sounded bizarre to the large majority of the political class and people in Lebanon, particularly because Hariri had spent a lot of time before his resignation reassuring everyone that, despite rumors, he intended to remain in office. The invective he hurled at his opponents appeared to flagrantly violate the “Presidential Compromise” struck a year before in October 2016 among all political parties that provided for Hariri’s return to the prime ministership, as well as the installation of Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hezbollah, as president.

These developments and the many leaks that followed his surprise resignation strongly suggested that the Saudis had forced Hariri into the decision. Their aim was to provoke an insurgency within the Sunni political class, encourage the Sunnis to escalate their rhetoric against Hezbollah, and dismantle a government that would have been replaced by a new one that excluded the Shiite party, consequences be damned. The whole plan backfired. The Lebanese Sunnis did not rebel against their Shiite compatriots but instead against the Saudi patron. Lebanese from all sects were infuriated by what they felt to be both a violation of their national sovereignty and an infantilizing attitude towards the main leader of one of Lebanon’s main confessional and political communities.

Saudi Arabia chose at first to escalate. Things reached a point where everyone feared the whole Middle East was on the brink of a devastating regional war or at least an extension of the Iraqi or Syrian level of violence into Lebanon. Eventually, however, Saudi Arabia, under French and U.S. pressure, was persuaded to step back, release its Lebanese detainee, and accept the status quo ante in Lebanon to the extent that it could be restored. This week, Riyadh tried to send some positive messages to the Lebanese political elite and people. First, in a telling move, the kingdom sent an envoy to Beirut to deliver an official “invitation” to Hariri to come to Saudi Arabia. Second, the choice of envoy who is now in charge of the Lebanese file, Nizar Alaoula, is an affable and diplomatic man, a major contrast to his incendiary predecessor, Thamer Sabhan, who played a highly negative role in the November crisis and was accused by too many Lebanese and Western officials of acting like a pyromaniac of Sunni-Shiite relations in Lebanon and in the region. Third, although Riyadh was still boycotting Aoun last fall, Alaoula insisted on meeting with the president before anyone else. He didn’t stay long, but long enough to state publicly that “Saudi Arabia respects Lebanon’s sovereignty and supports its stability.” And if he did not push the reconciliation process as far as getting together with Hezbollah officials, he did pay a visit to Nabih Berri, head of parliament and the chief of Hezbollah’s main ally, AMAL, the second Shiite party. Aloula even praised Berri as a “national figure who embodies hope and optimism.” Finally, the Saudi emissary chose not to meet Ashraf Rifi, a staunch Sunni client of Riyadh, albeit one who has harshly criticized Hariri.

Has Saudi Arabia Learned its Lesson?

One question still hangs over the present moment, however. Is Hariri’s departure to Riyadh a “visit” or a summons? Hariri headed to Riyadh the very next day after Aloula arrived in Beirut. The Saudi envoy was supposed to stay the week, but Hariri was obviously in a hurry to meet his mentors again—or is it the other way around? In fact, he left 24 hours after Alaoula landed in Beirut, forcing the new envoy to shorten his stay and accompany the prime minister to Riyadh. Not all of the details of his stay in Riyadh are yet available. In November, a squad of Royal Guards met Hariri at the airport and immediately confiscated his phone and those of his bodyguards. This time, a number of high-ranking Saudi diplomats greeted the landing of Hariri’s plane, and he met with King Salman the very next day. But MbS granted him an audience only two days after that, suggesting that the “reconciliation” is still incomplete. All the same, the media blackout supposedly reflected the fact that he had been busy there, engaging in series of confidential meetings with numerous officials with whom he “discussed Lebanon and the region.” But the stakes for Saudi Arabia are far higher than just “making up” with its Lebanese protégé after what happened in November—or “forgiving” him, depending on how the story is told. Legislative elections are coming in Lebanon in May. And things do not look good so far for the kingdom’s allies there. To start with, Hariri has stubbornly ignored Saudi Arabia’s Christian friends—mainly the Lebanese Forces of Samir Geagea and the Kataeb of Samy Gemayel, who used to be the Christian main allies of Hariri’s Future Current. He doesn’t want their candidates running on his slate at all. After Hariri returned to Lebanon from his Saudi detention in November, it appeared that both Geagea and Gemayel, who had visited the kingdom in September, had secretly lobbied Riyadh to help arrange Hariri’s dismissal and his replacement by a more “pugnacious” prime minister who could stand up to Hezbollah. Plus, Hariri is striking alliances in more than one constituency with their main Christian foe, Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, which is pro-Hezbollah. Unless Riyadh intervenes on their behalf and persuades Hariri to change his mind, the traditional share of seats in parliament for the pro-Saudi Christians will seriously decline this spring. At the same time, Hariri himself is a much-diminished figure. MbS did state in a Washington Post interview a few days ago that, thanks to what happened in November, Hariri “now is in a better position” in Lebanon, relative to Hezbollah. But he could not be more wrong.

The Sunni community in Lebanon did defend Hariri and demanded his return in November mainly because his apparent captivity represented a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty. But the man himself has lost a large part of the support he enjoyed in the late 2000s. His weakness of character, his confused politics, and his tendency to run away from the country at each major crisis have long tired his followers, both those who wish he were not that lenient with Hezbollah and those who wish he would forgo his sporadic but dangerous outbursts against the Shiite party. Moreover, the war in Syria and the support that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have provided to some jihadist groups there have also put off many people in the Middle East, even among Sunnis, even in Lebanon. Finally, Hariri’s financial problems in the last few years—problems exacerbated by Riyadh itself—as well as his failure to pay the wages of his employees and political clients have done the rest. Hariri is aware of the situation, to the point that he will not run as a candidate in his own hometown of Saïda, and, according to some serious rumors, not even in Beirut where he has regularly won elections since the assassination of his father Rafiq in 2005. There is some talk about his targeting a whole new district, Hasbaya-Marjeyoun, whose constituents are unhappy about being surrounded by Shiite and Druze areas. Even in the Bekaa, Sunnis have already made it clear that they would prefer to vote in their majority for Aoun’s Sunni candidates.

Hariri’s Impossible Choice

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