New Lebanon Leader Dumps Aoun Cabinet

Lebanese President Elias Hrawi formed a new reconciliation government Saturday just eight hours after his election and moved rapidly to dismiss the interim military government headed by Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun.

Setting the stage for a confrontation with the embattled Christian forces commander, Hrawi abolished Aoun’s three-member Cabinet and launched consultations aimed at appointing a new army commander, perhaps as early as this week.

But Aoun, barricaded in a bunker beneath the presidential palace in Christian East Beirut, announced that he does not view the election of Hrawi as any more valid than that of his predecessor, Rene Mouawad, elected Nov. 5 and then killed in a massive bomb blast 17 days later.

“Both have been elected under Syrian occupation,” Aoun said in a statement released Saturday. “They should have waited to find out who killed Mouawad before appointing a new president.”

Mouawad was buried Saturday in his hometown of Zagharta with six of the bodyguards who were among the 23 others slain in Wednesday’s bomb blast. Tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets, and weeping women threw themselves on the coffins before they were lowered into their graves, according to news agency reports from Lebanon.

Pope John Paul II sent an envoy to convey his “deep sorrow and condolences” to Mouawad’s family, and in a message read at the funeral urged the Lebanese to “practice self-restraint, reject desperation and proceed with reconciliation.”

Hrawi, who did not attend the funeral because of security concerns, appointed veteran Sunni Muslim politician Salim Hoss as his prime minister. Hoss named the remainder of the 14-member Cabinet that will attempt to assert authority over a country that has been without a unified national government for more than a year.

The Cabinet includes representatives of all of Lebanon’s warring sectarian communities, including the Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Armenian Christians, the Sunni and Shiite Muslims and the Druze.

Powerful Muslim militia chieftains Walid Jumblatt and Nabih Berri won posts as minister of transportation and public works, and minister of electrical, water resources and housing, respectively. Both had served in the Muslim government headed by Hoss that has rivaled Aoun’s Christian government since the Lebanese Parliament was unable to elect a president in 1988.

The new Cabinet list also includes hard-line Christian Parliament deputy George Saadeh, head of the Falangist Party and a coalition of other right-wing Christian groups, in an apparent attempt to draw Aoun’s historic base of support into the new reconciliation government.

However, it was not clear whether Saadeh would accept the appointment. Saadeh, like some other Christian deputies who defied Aoun and voted for a new Arab League peace plan last month in Taif, Saudi Arabia, has not yet returned to Lebanon and did not participate in the presidential balloting Friday night.

Aoun ordered the Christian deputies not to endorse the accord because it contained no provision for immediate withdrawal of the 40,000 Syrian troops still in Lebanon under a 1976 peacekeeping mandate. The latest round of fighting started last spring when Aoun vowed to forcibly eject the troops, and ended with a cease-fire Sept. 23 after more than 800 had been killed.

“I was surprised by my appointment,” Saadeh said in a statement broadcast by the Christian Voice of Lebanon radio. “I don’t oppose the new government, but the question of my participation must first be approved by the Falange politburo.”

The fear of reprisals may be well-founded. The houses of seven Christian Parliament members in East Beirut have been bombed since approval of the peace accord in Taif, and a caller to a Western news agency Thursday, identifying himself as a spokesman for the Christian Solidarity Front, warned the legislators that they would face the same fate as Mouawad if they elected a president to replace him.

Mouawad was killed despite stringent security measures taken by Syrian authorities to protect him. His apartment, located adjacent to the Syrian troop headquarters, was protected by steel sheets and bulletproof glass, and his car was surrounded by armed escorts as it paraded through West Beirut during Wednesday’s independence day celebration.

The bomb that killed him, authorities said, was placed in an empty store along the motorcade route and detonated by remote control. It was large enough, containing an estimated 550 pounds of explosives, that it could hardly miss.

It was not clear what steps the new government will have to take in order to dislodge Aoun. Mouawad had remained at a standoff with the feisty military commander throughout his 17 days in office, in large part because of the 10,000-strong Christian Lebanese Forces that so far have refused to come over to the new government.

They are no match for the 40,000 Syrian troops that control two-thirds of Lebanon and are now available to back Hrawi’s government. Officials of the new government appeared more inclined to focus on other means of persuasion, but Hrawi, in his inaugural address, said that while he is seeking to cooperate with all Lebanese “without any exceptions,” the move toward peace “is capable of wiping out whoever stands in its way.”