Lebanese policemen secure the parliament building in Beirut as deputies arrive to attend a session to elect a new president, Nov. 23.

At midnight last Friday (Nov. 23) night, Lebanon entered the uncharted waters of a constitutional crisis as the outgoing President Emile Lahoud’s term ended without the appointment of a successor. Earlier in the day, the scheduled meeting of parliament to elect a new president was postponed for the fifth time amidst an opposition boycott that prevented the two-third quorum required by the Constitution.
Lebanon has now entered what is being called “controlled chaos,“ a precarious phase in which leaders of both the pro-US March 14 coalition and the opposition have pledged to intensify the search for a consensus presidential candidate over the coming week while toning down the provocative political rhetoric and sectarian venom that has featured so prominently in recent months. This deal has prevented, or at least postponed for now, what most Lebanese fear most: civil unrest which could lead to yet another war.
The dangers remain very real amidst claims by the more extreme elements within March 14 that they retain the right to elect a president even in the absence of the two-third quorum, something the opposition claims will provoke conflict.
In the meantime, it remains unclear who has inherited Lebanon’s presidential powers. In his final act as President, Lahoud transferred authority to maintain security and order to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to prevent a slide into what he considered a ’state of emergency.’
March 14 members, including Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, dismissed this move as legally void, asserting that under the Constitution it is the cabinet that automatically assumes the role of the presidency to avoid the dangers of a presidential vacuum.
However, the opposition-which includes Hizbullah, General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s Amal Movement, as well as Lahoud-have considered the Siniora government illegitimate since the resignation of all the Shi’a ministers last November, and will interpret any attempt by the Siniora government to use such authority as tantamount to a coup d’Žtat.
The apparently irreconcilable political split in Lebanon may be illustrated by the debate surrounding President Lahoud’s legacy.
On the one hand, supporters of March 14 demonize him for being Syria’s man in Lebanon. They trace the current crisis to Syria forcing the extension of Lahoud’s term for three years in 2004 which, they say, precipitated the assassination of the former PM Rafiq Hariri.
It is this second legacy which the US and March 14 perceive as a threat and thus share a common desire to destroy.
While the personal and sectarian dynamics of Lebanese politics (including the declining role of Maronite Christians in Lebanon that has so incensed Michel Aoun and even the Maronite Patriarch) should not be underestimated in terms of prolonging the current crisis, it is the larger US project to reconfigure the Arab (as well as larger Muslim) region--and the resistance this has engendered--that has played the decisive role.
In this sense, Lebanon’s constitutional predicament and effective state of emergency reflects the US failure to impose its will, and mirrors similarly botched US interference in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
All eyes in Lebanon turn now to Annapolis to gauge the likelihood of a ’deal’ over Lebanon in case US-Syrian relations thaw.
It is more likely that Annapolis will represent another signpost in the US drive to solidify the de facto unholy alliance that has bound Israel and the so-called “moderate“ Arab states under US patronage. In this case, it is difficult to be optimistic about prospects for Lebanon or the region.
COUNTERPUNCH.COM

Calling a referendum on matters of Europe is a risky business anywhere in Europe--and nowhere more so than in Denmark. That, however, has not stopped recently re-elected prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen announcing on November 22nd another referendum.
Voters would have their say--during the life of the new parliament--on whether to join the euro and cancel three other EU opt-outs on defence, justice and home affairs, and EU citizenship that were negotiated in 1992 in a second attempt to win over public support for the EU’s Maastricht treaty.
Mr Rasmussen may present any such vote as uncontroversial political house-cleaning, allowing Denmark to attend key EU meetings on policies that it already supports.
But the electorate may once again prove to be more sceptical. Having initially rejected the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and the euro in 2000, the government cannot be certain of the electorate’s support this time around.
There has been precious little discussion about the four opt-outs since the previous euro referendum in 2000. But Mr Rasmussen had been mulling the issue for several months before his recent re-election and evidently concluded that the case was strong.
The Danish krone has been tracking the euro and the D-Mark before it since 1982, and currently fluctuates within a +/-2.25% band around the euro.
Although the Danish business cycle often deviates from the core euro area countries, its need for macro-economic flexibility is limited: the economy comfortably meets Maastricht euro criteria on inflation, long-term interest rates, exchange rates, deficits and debt.
Yet it continues to pay an additional 25 basis points over euro rates on its borrowing, unnecessary transaction costs on currency exchange, and is excluded from voting at ECB interest rate setting meetings.
Similarly, Danish representatives are asked to leave the room when EU defence initiatives are discussed, and, to the chagrin of many Danes, the country was forced to withdraw from peace-keeping duties in Bosnia when the NATO mission there was handed over to the EU.
On the face of it, therefore, the prospects of winning broader public support to abandon its opt-outs, would seem encouraging. There’s a strong party-political consensus in favour of closer EU integration among the mainstream parties--Liberals, Conservatives, Social Democrats, Social Liberals and the New Alliance--which comprise a comfortable majority in parliament.
Even the two eurosceptic parties, the Danish People’s Party and the Socialist People’s Party no longer call for Denmark to withdraw from the EU.
Voters are also warming to the EU. A recent Eurobarometer poll suggests that Danes’ reputation for euroscepticism is unjustified: 74% said that the country has benefited from EU membership (among the highest in the EU and well above the EU average of 54%).
A majority, albeit slightly smaller, is in favour of joining the euro, as consumers have become familiar with the euro notes and coins circulating successfully in the eurozone since 2002. A survey published by Danske Bank on November 23rd, showed that 44.2% would vote “yes“ to the euro, with an additional 6.3% saying “maybe yes“, compared with 38.1% saying “no“ and 6.8% “maybe no“, though with some 20% still undecided, this is not a reliable guide.
There is widespread concern over the impact of the other opt-outs. For example, participation in EU-led peace-keeping and humanitarian relief efforts has been hampered by the opt-out on EU defence. Similarly, since 2001 the country has increasingly accepted the need for closer co-operation to combat terrorism but this has been made harder by the opt out from EU justice and home affairs.
According to a Borsen poll held last November, 55% supported participation in a common defence policy as against 27.8% opposed; and 47.2% was in favour of participating in EU justice and home affairs with 32.3% against. Only in the case of EU citizenship was there a negative response, with 38.8% opposed and 36.4% in favour.
ECONOMIST.COM

Discreetly but progressively and confidently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is expanding south and southeast almost uncontested--after the collapse of the former USSR-led Warsaw Pact--outside the mandate designated by its statute into the Arab Middle East as well as into the Caspian Sea regions.
However, the U.S. obsession with finding an exit strategy from the Iraqi quagmire made Washington less attentive to Turkey’s legitimate vital national interests, thus insensitively antagonizing the alliance’s southern strong arm and alerting it into the defensive, not against enemies, but against its own allies.
Turkey now stands in the eye of a storm created by this same ally, a storm threatening a geopolitical fall out between the two NATO allies since 1952.
NATO has already secured its presence on the middle tier between the two regions, in Turkey (a member), Afghanistan (where it has a 25.000-strong force) and to a lesser extent in Iraq where the western alliance is training the “new Iraqi army.“
The contesting French influence had eased when former President Jacque Chirac near the end of his term shifted to coordinating with the United States in Lebanon; the French contest, particularly on the African theatre and especially on NATO’s northern Arab tier seems to have been completely neutralized with the electoral victory of the new President Nicolas Sarkozy, who chose to engage Washington as a “friend“ and decided to rejoin NATO’s military structure.
The absence of any credible indigenous system rules out any worthwhile obstacles to NATO expansion from within the Arab Middle East region.
The Arab League is practically no more than a fractured, division-burdened high level forum of a regional gathering structure with no teeth at all, threatened by the US-Israeli strategic alliance and the NATO with disintegration into an alternative wider “Greater Middle East“ security structure that would embrace Israel as an integral leading partner.
The expansion southward was highlighted on October 9 with the signing of a treaty with Egypt at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, “in a move that opens the door for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to be involved in security matters along Egypt’s border with Gaza (Strip),“ according to the Jerusalem Post the next day, to possibly secure in particular the Salahuddin Passage (Philadelphi Route) according to Ynet.
Egypt has become the second Middle Eastern country to sign a treaty with NATO after a similar treaty with Israel in 2006.
Both treaties with Egypt and Israel were initiated under the Individual Cooperation Programmes (ICP), which aim at “promoting political and military ties with the Euro-Atlantic and the Mediterranean regions along with security cooperation with NATO and MD partners, in order to enhance Mediterranean regional security and stability,“ NATO said in the statement.
The ICP was upgraded from the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI), which was adopted by the NATO summit in Istanbul on 28-29 June 2004 with an eye on the Arab states of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) to have priority in joining the alliance in partnership arrangements. Both the ICP and ICI were conceived as mechanisms to bypass the NATO statute, which confines its expansion to Europe and the North Atlantic regions.
thousandreasons.org

Ethnic Albanians have a name for Kosovo under international supervision: UNMIKISTAN. A play on the acronym for the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the name has recently taken on a tone of intolerable impatience.
After eight years of waiting for the international community to grant independence, Kosovo’s Albanians are on the verge of declaring it themselves. The US must act swiftly to build international support for their declaration, or the move could destabilize the entire region.
The UN is far from Kosovo’s first occupier. Throughout history, the province has been ruled by outside powers. First it was the Romans, then the Byzantines, and later the Serbs. In 1389, when the declining Serbian empire made its symbolic last stand against the rising Ottoman Turks, its army was defeated in Kosovo.
Six centuries later, in 1989, a rising Serb nationalist named Slobodan Milosevic journeyed to Kosovo to pay homage to his fallen ancestors. His visit marked the beginning of another occupation--one that transformed Kosovo into a virtual apartheid state. Although Albanians make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo’s population, Mr. Milosevic purged them from positions of power and barred them from schools, hospitals, and other public institutions. But it was not until Milosevic began a campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1999 that the international community intervened militarily to protect the Albanians, ushering in the UN administration that continues to this day.
Unlike its predecessors, the UN has been a reluctant occupier, and has made a considerable effort to resolve Kosovo’s status--a difficult task.
Kosovo’s Serbs say the province is the cradle of their civilization and ought to remain part of Serbia, while Albanians will accept nothing less than full independence. Even skilled mediator Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland appointed as a UN special envoy in 2005, could not get the sides to reach a compromise.
Earlier this year, after months of failed negotiations, Mr. Ahtisaari proposed a plan of “supervised independence,“ which would grant Kosovo sovereignty with significant international protection for ethnic minorities. Albanians accepted the plan. Serbs did not.
Serbia claims that, unlike the other states of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo is a province and thus not entitled to sovereignty. Russia, a longtime Serb ally, has vowed to veto any Security Council resolution that would grant Kosovo independence, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent for separatist movements elsewhere.
But unlike Chechnya, Abkhazia, and other provinces demanding autonomy, Kosovo has a unique situation: In the wake of the 1999 NATO intervention, the UN was given the exceptional right to determine the province’s status. Alarmists argue that this loophole provides a blueprint for other separatist movements to follow.
However, the conditions that led to the UN’s unique authority to settle Kosovo’s status are hardly easy to reproduce. Some 1 million Kosovars were driven from their homes by Serbian ethnic cleansing, and more than 11,000 massacred. It is perverse to imagine that any movement would be willing to provoke such horrific suffering to achieve independence.
Under UN supervision, Kosovo’s Albanians have demonstrated their commitment to respecting the rights of Serbs living among them. There have been some exceptions, notably in the attacks of 2004, but these outbursts have been the work of isolated groups, and would be even less common if Albanians believed their independence depended on protecting minorities (as would be the case with the Ahtisaari plan).
But after eight years, Albanians’ patience is wearing thin. They say that if the international community does not recognize Kosovo’s independence by Dec. 10, they will declare it themselves.
The stakes could not be higher. In the Balkans, where minorities in one country are the majority in another, violence has a natural chain effect. A spark in one province could set off a blaze consuming the entire region.
So far, the US has been outspoken in its support for Kosovo’s independence. The Bush administration has even said that if Russia blocks a Security Council resolution, the US will unilaterally recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty.
Yet if the war in Iraq has taught Americans one lesson, it is that unilateral action is a poor substitute for multilateral coalitions. So long as Serbia and Russia continue to reject the sensible plan of “supervised independence,“ the US must ratchet up its diplomatic effort to build full European backing for Kosovo’s unilateral declaration.
Whether Kosovo’s Albanians will declare an end to occupation is no longer in question. But whether that declaration will mark the beginning of another conflict remains to be seen.
With so much at stake, the US must take swift action to ensure that the declaration receives the international recognition it so desperately needs.
CSMONITOR.COM