Charbel said that the case of Islamists imprisoned without charge would be resolved soon.

“Al-Qaida doesn’t exist in Lebanon but there are people who support it. It doesn’t have a training base in the country nor does it receive funding ”Charbel told reporters in a news conference in Tripoli following the North Lebanon Security Council’s meeting at the Serail

“We are ready to discuss the recent incidents with all the parties in Tripoli in order to preserve security in the city,” Charbel added

Charbel statements came after an Islamist supporter of the Syrian opposition, Shadi Mawlawi, 25, was arrested and accused of belonging to a “terrorist organization.” Reports surfaced that Mawlawi was linked to Al-Qaeda in Lebanon.

Mawlawi’s controversial arrest Saturday sparked three-day clashes in Tripoli, north Lebanon, between opponents and supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, leaving at least seven dead and 100 wounded.

What outraged Mawlawi’s supporters was the way he was tricked to be arrested… General Security personnel dressed in civilian clothes lured him to a social services center belonging to Finance Minister Mohammad Safadi with promises of medical care to his sister , only to arrest him.

As the U.S. waits for what many believe is the inevitable failure of a United Nations-backed plan, American officials say they would rather U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan to pronounce his diplomatic efforts a failure himself.

Senior officials say the international monitors provided for in the current agreement with the Syrian government, however small in number, offer a small buffer against Assad’s forces. Additionally, the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council want Russia to come to its own conclusion that Assad is not living up to his end of the agreement in ceasing the violence, and the plan is a failure. The concern is should the U.S. push for the next step, it would further alienate Moscow, which is skeptical about efforts to push out Syria’s president. How the plan fails is as important as when it does, Western diplomats said this week.

“You have the politics part of this plan, and you have what is really happening on the ground,” one U.S. official said. “We are going to be in a bit of a holding pattern for a while, debating on whether this has succeeded or failed, and whether it was designed to fail.”

But the U.S. is looking for ways it can further aid the opposition. U.S. officials and congressional sources say the Obama administration has realized that nonlethal communication, currently the bulk of U.S. support for the opposition, is not enough. In recent weeks, the U.S. has broadened its outreach to include Syria’s rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army.

Sources say the administration is already increasing coordination with Gulf nations working to arm the opposition and is actively debating providing additional military support.

“These guys need space, training and greater capabilities,” one congressional source said. “What is that, where would it be done, who would it be for? Those are the questions the administration is trying to answer, and they need to be moving a lot faster.”

So far, representatives of the rebel groups say the weapons are not coming in any significant numbers.

“The problem is we want weapons but have received nothing so far,” said Free Syrian Army Capt. Riad Ahmed, currently in Istanbbul.

Sen. John McCain R-Arizona, one of the administration’s harshest critics on Syria policy who recently returned from a trip to the Turkish border with Syria, has openly called for arming the opposition and supporting havens for opposition members.

“What they need, first of all, is weapons to defend themselves,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Then we need to talk with our allies about a sanctuary, a place where the government can organize, where we can train and equip these forces so that we can have a fair fight.”

The State Department has also stepped up its efforts to unite Syria’s fractured political opposition. Last week, the State Department invited leaders of the Kurdish National Council, from the relatively quiet eastern part of Syria, to Washington. In meetings with U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford other senior US officials, sources said the possibility was raised of opening another front against al-Assad’s forces to force him to divert resources from the western part of the country.

Sanctions have left Syria’s main revenue sources, tourism and oil exports, “almost completely dried up,” according to David Cohen, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “They’re not earning, and on the expenditure side, they’re spending money to try and keep inflation down by subsidizing food and fuel, and they’re spending a lot of money, frankly, pursuing the violence against their own people,” he said last week at an event in Washington. “The combined effect of this is that the economic situation in Syria today is quite perilous.”

In the coming weeks, a working group made up of representatives from various countries will meet in Washington to consider how to increase financial pressure on Damascus, Cohen said.

Earlier this year, the administration concluded that the Syrian National Council, the primary opposition group dealing with the international community, will not be running the country after al-Assad falls. Since then, Ambassador Ford, who has combed the globe to meet with Syrians from all walks of life, has tried to identify Syrians inside the country whom the U.S. can do business with. Members of the country’s various revolutionary councils – the grassroots movements that are coordinating on the ground with the armed opposition – are viewed as more organized and potentially able to help Syria through a transition period.

There is still little coordination between Syrians on the ground and the Syrian National Council, which is still the international face of the opposition. In the coming days, Ford is hoping to convene a meeting of a diverse group of Syrians, including some from inside the country, with the goal of creating a more cohesive opposition that can inspire more confidence from the international community.

“It is preposterous that we are only at this point after 15 months,” another U.S. official lamented.

Once the opposition is sufficiently united, the ball will be in the U.S. court to actively support it. Until now, the Obama administration has been loath to support militarization of the conflict in Syria, fearing it would spark the kind of civil war that sprang out of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Yet last week’s bombing of a Syrian intelligence facility, presumed to be the work of al Qaeda in Iraq, proves those fears have already been realized. Some U.S. officials and diplomats worry how long members of the opposition will be willing to fight a losing battle with the regime without sufficient international support until they turn to al Qaeda, which is more than willing to help them wage jihad.

“By not doing anything,” warns Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “we are contributing to the fact that this is tipping from a civil resistance into a civil insurgency and into a civil war.”

The international community is looking toward the United States for the elusive plan B. But as the presidential election in the United States approaches, diplomats in the region voice frustration about what they perceive as a lack of political will from the Obama administration to orchestrate the next move in Syria.

“In order to say the Annan plan doesn’t have any hope, you have to have a plan to deploy immediately,” one senior Western diplomat said. “If you say it’s dead, people are going to say, ‘What is next?’ There is nothing.”

Nowhere is that sentiment felt more strongly than in Turkey. While the Obama administration has been actively considering support for havens inside Syria, Washington is looking to Ankara to lead the way. Turkish officials, however, say they are looking for the U.S. to provide the leadership first, which they say starts with Washington working more actively to secure Russian support for a U.N. Security Council resolution under Chapter 7, which would provide a legal basis for any military intervention.

Turkish officials say they want international legitimacy for any further action, which only such a U.N. mandate can provide.

“We are prepared to do everything possible in our power to help the Syrian people,” one senior Turkish official said. “But if you are waiting for us to come and say we will do it, we won’t go it alone.”

The U.S. also wants Turkey to make a political decision to allow training and equipping of Syrian opposition on its soil. Ankara has told the U.S. it is prepared to allow weapons to flow across its borders and more actively help the internal Syrian opposition, but only if Washington, too, exercises leadership.

“The Turks are prepared to deliver if the U.S. is with them,” one U.S. official said. “They don’t want to do something and be left holding the bag. They want to be assured of success, and that means American leadership.”

Syria is likely to be a topic of discussion at this weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago. Although the alliance has repeatedly said it has no plans to wade into the Syrian conflict, Turkey has suggested it could invoke Article IV of the NATO Charter, which allows NATO to begin consultations on threats to Turkey, which would pave the way for consultations on how Syria may pose a threat to Turkish security.

CNN

The fighting in Tripoli, 70 km (43 miles) from Beirut, has highlighted how violence in Syria can spill into Lebanon, a country that was garrisoned by Syrian troops until 2005.

A security source said one Lebanese soldier and five residents were wounded in the clashes, which were mainly between government troops and gunmen in the Sunni Muslim district of Bab al-Tabbaneh. Residents said at least two army officers were among the wounded, but army sources could not confirm that.

Eight people have been killed and dozens wounded since Saturday in Tripoli, home to Sunni Muslims who support the uprising in Syria and a minority Alawite community who back
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad himself is from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, while the revolt has been led by Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims.

A small Alawite minority is concentrated in Tripoli, a conservative Sunni city where many residents have been enraged by Assad’s bloody crackdown on his opponents. Beneath their hilly enclave lies a Sunni district, and tensions have boiled over into clashes several times since the 14-month-old revolt in Syria began.

Chicago Tribune

Now this once-sleepy chunk of north-central Pennsylvania is a star on the map of an emerging national energy rush. Six hotels are new or being built, and about 100 companies have moved to town, sometimes so fast that the head of the local Chamber of Commerce has told executives wanting guided tours to wait.

“I’ve said, ‘Look sir, get in line,’ ” says Vince Matteo, chief executive of the Williamsport/Lycoming chamber. “Now I know people in their 20s with high school (diplomas) making $120,000 a year.”

Much of Wall Street and Washington is seized by the hope that the U.S.‘s energy future will be as bright as Williamsport’s. As Americans heave a sigh of relief at gasoline prices falling back from near $4 a gallon, big new discoveries of domestic oil and natural gas hold the promise of more substantial benefits for the U.S. economy for decades to come — even the possibility of energy independence.

Every president since Richard Nixon has called for the U.S. to wean itself from needing oil from unstable or unsavory countries. The nation’s new-found energy riches are likely to bring that ambition closer to reality in the next two decades, according to many forecasters.

It’s no pipe dream. The U.S. is already the world’s fastest-growing oil and natural gas producer. Counting the output from Canada and Mexico, North America is “the new Middle East,” Citigroup analysts declare in a recent report.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency says U.S. oil imports will drop 20% by 2025. Oil giant BP projects the U.S. will get 94% of its energy domestically by 2030, up from 77% now, as oil imports fall by half. Energy billionaire T. Boone Pickens, a major investor in oil and natural-gas companies, said the U.S. can at least end oil imports from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, about half its total, through new drilling and by shifting diesel-swilling trucks to natural gas. Any other oil needs should be from politically stable allies such as Canada, Pickens said.

Most enticing, a team of analysts and economists at Citigroup argues that the U.S., or at least North America, can achieve energy independence by 2020, as more domestic production and doubling down on conservation produce a virtuous cycle. The U.S. can make itself a net exporter of crude oil, refined products and natural gas — says Citigroup energy strategist Seth Kleinman.

“The notion of the U.S. getting to zero net imports of oil is obviously a sexy notion, but it’s not necessary for it to mean the world will change,” he says. “We are seeing a dramatic collapse in U.S. net imports of oil as we speak, to the tune of almost 1 million barrels a day each year over the last four years.”

If anything like that happens, an improbable-sounding litany of good things can result.

In practical terms, more energy independence could mean 3.6 million new jobs, enough to cut unemployment by two percentage points, Citigroup argues. It could help manufacturers and chemical businesses that use lots of energy or make products from natural gas. It might give the U.S. a structural advantage on trade partners in energy costs, helping to offset the edge that cheaper labor gives nations such as China, Kleinman says. Already, U.S. natural gas prices are a seventh of what they are in Beijing, Pickens says.

“The potential is clearly there for a genuine revitalization and reindustrialization of the economy,” Kleinman says. “In industries where energy is a major element of costs, the U.S. is moving into a uniquely advantaged position.”

After years of gripes that the U.S. imports too much oil, the energy industry is pumping a gusher of good-news numbers:

•The U.S. price of natural gas has plummeted more than 80% since 2008, including nearly 45% in the last year, thanks to new supplies. The falling cost of natural gas alone will save U.S. households $926 a year between now and 2015, consulting firm IHS Global Insight says.

•The USA’s 15% gain in crude-oil production since 2008 is by far the world’s biggest, with new fields just beginning to be developed. The U.S. has overtaken Russia as the world’s largest refined-petroleum exporter, according to Citigroup.

•Utilities’ switchover to cheap natural gas from coal is lowering power bills. One utility switching to more gas plants, Georgia Power, has filed to cut Atlanta-area electricity rates 6%, citing a 19% drop in fuel costs.

Drill and conserve

A dozen years after Texas wildcatter George Mitchell commercialized a new gas-drilling technology called hydraulic fracking, the new energy boom is taking off. It began with gas, as fields such as the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast and the Barnett Shale in Texas began producing gas that hadn’t been recoverable until Mitchell combined fracking — which uses chemicals, water and sand to force gas out of rock — with horizontal drilling, which yielded much more than simply drilling straight down.

More recently, the same technologies have been adapted to drill for oil. Oil fields are being developed from Pennsylvania to Alaska — a half-dozen or more major sites, each including many smaller ones.

The rush to oil from gas is now so fast that Devon Energy, the No. 3 independent oil-and-gas-driller, isn’t drilling a single new gas well this year, CEO John Richels says.

Because of fracking, Citi says U.S. oil production might climb more than a third by 2015, driven by “tight oil” from shale and tar sands that until recently was too costly to extract. Government estimates say domestic production will rise 22% by 2020 to 6.7 million barrels per day. At the same time, the 19 million barrels that Americans burn daily may fall by 2 million, by Citi’s numbers. One reason: The EIA says the U.S. will be 42% more energy-efficient by 2035, continuing an enduring trend.

One reason for all that new efficiency is regulation.

Automakers face federal corporate-average fuel economy standards doubling, to up to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. A 2007 law requires oil companies to quadruple production of renewable auto fuels by 2022. States such as California are making utilities buy up to 60% more renewable-sourced electricity by 2020, says Stuart Hemphill, vice president for power supplies at Southern California Edison. “In California, only two kinds of (energy-producing) facilities are getting built — natural gas and solar,” Hemphill says.

Why $2 gasoline is unlikely

For consumers, America’s new energy supplies help contain costs — but they’re not a magic path back to $2 gasoline.

The good news: Natural-gas heating costs have dropped nearly 40% since 2008, undoing half their 160% climb after 1999. Electricity costs have remained flat, too.

The bad news: Gasoline prices have flirted with all-time highs this year, and even the fast-emerging new supplies are unlikely to offer major relief soon.

To understand why, it helps to master some numbers.

First is the number two — the U.S. has two main energy markets, one each for electricity and transportation. They’re very different. Electric utilities use mostly coal, natural gas and nuclear power, or renewables, almost all from the U.S. and Canada. Cars use oil, about 45% of it imported.

The second big number is 86 — the 86 million barrels of crude produced worldwide daily. About 19 million are burned in the U.S., three-fourths of them for transportation, the government says. About 8.9 million are imported, 4.2 million from OPEC. Bringing crude-oil imports down will be about changing how Americans fill gas tanks — or whatever advanced electric-car battery replaces gas tanks.

Domestic natural-gas gluts will do little for real energy independence until more cars use electricity or natural gas, says Hemphill. That’s one reason Pickens is campaigning to subsidize converting business truck fleets to natural gas — legislation the Senate defeated in March.

“I’m for anything American,” Pickens said. “I want at least to get off the 5 million barrels a day we get from OPEC.”

The most important number may be $70 — the estimated cost to produce a barrel of oil from shale or tar sands, the heart of the new U.S. supplies. While natural-gas prices have sunk, oil prices might not, since they typically follow the cost of producing the most expensive barrel on the market.

Today’s world oil prices of about $111 a barrel are boosted by tensions from Iran’s nuclear program, as well as emerging-market oil demand that will exceed that of developed nations for the first time this year, according to the International Energy Agency. At about $95 a barrel, U.S. oil prices have risen, too, even though the U.S. doesn’t import Iranian crude.

Using the rule of thumb from research firm IHS CERA, that a $10 move in crude changes U.S. gasoline prices by 24 cents a gallon, dropping crude to $70 would lower pump prices about $1, leaving gasoline near $3.

Broad economic impact

Even so, all this new energy is creating jobs across the country. North Dakota, now the nation’s fourth-largest oil producing state, boasts a 3% unemployment rate, the nation’s lowest. In Williamsport, the local economy grew 7.8% in 2010, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing metro areas.

Projections for energy-related jobs vary, but are all pretty large. More than two-thirds of Citi’s estimated 3.6 million new jobs will come from multiplier effects, as the 550,000 new workers in fossil fuel-related jobs spend their incomes, or as other Americans spend the money they save from cheaper energy, Citi says. IHS Global Insight says the natural-gas boom alone has created 600,000 jobs and will rise to 1.6 million by 2025.

The money saved on energy will pay dividends throughout the economy. Lowering the $400 billion the U.S. sends abroad annually for oil would function like a huge tax cut, says Chris Lafakis, energy economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“A third to 40% would be my guess” at how much the U.S. can cut imports by the next decade, Lafakis says. “At 40%, that’s $160 billion a year, and that’s massive. It’s like the temporary payroll tax cut we have now, plus a third, and it lasts forever.”

A less statistical way to reckon all this is to look at Williamsport.

“It put people to work who hadn’t worked in a long time,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbettsays. “It was a natural-gas rush that put demand on housing, on stores, on restaurants.”

Watching for exaggerations

Yet many hopes — and fears — about the U.S. energy boom will likely prove exaggerated.

Citi’s thesis that gas and oil will stay cheaper in the U.S. than abroad, for example, assumes most exports of U.S. crude remain illegal and natural-gas exports stay rare, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Instead, U.S. crude is likely to be refined into exportable products such as gasoline, while infrastructure to export liquefied natural gas improves. Both will pull U.S. prices toward higher world levels, he says.

“Markets have a wonderful way of finding their way around restrictions when there’s money to be made,” Zandi says.

Williamsport exemplifies the likeliest impact of all. With natural-gas prices so low, drilling has all but halted. But gas companies are using the lull to build pipelines, as drilling action moves to oil patches in Western Pennsylvania.

In the meantime, some spinoff industries are coming into focus. Shell has announced plans to build a cracking plant, which will make chemicals from natural gas, outside Pittsburgh. The expected payoff includes 10,000 construction jobs, Corbett says. All this is part of turning the short-term energy boom into a long-term economic plan, he says.

While short-term booms wax and wane, hope persists that the new oil and gas means a better future for Williamsport, and for America.

“They tell us not to worry,” the Chamber’s Matteo says. “The gas isn’t going anywhere and neither are they.”

USA today

State television airs interviews with men confessing to acts of violence, sullying the image of Assad’s opponents. But the interviews are mocked by many Syrians and an ex-producer says that many confessions are bogus.

Although an ardent supporter of Assad, the former employee said she is distressed by what she describes as a campaign of misinformation waged by the official “Suriya” television channel.

“I used to arrive at work and one of the editors would tell us that we have a person to confess,” she told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from her former employer.

“Some of the men are just normal people who were arrested in anti-government demonstrations and others were thieves and criminals who were nearing the end of their sentence,” said the producer, in her late twenties. “They were told they will be set free if they confess to the made-up crimes.”

One confession was that of Qusai Shaqfeh from Hama, a city that has seen fighting between rebels and government troops in recent months and has a long history of dissent against the Assads – Bashar’s late father Hafez sent troops to crush an uprising there in 1982, killing thousands.

Shaqfeh, 29, said in the aired programme that rebels killed members of the security forces and threw them off a bridge. He also said he contacted journalists working for foreign media and sent them footage of faked peaceful demonstrations to use as propaganda against Assad.

Another confession gained particular fame in Syria when the confessor, Ghassin Selawaya from the coastal city of Lattakia, appeared to be playing to the demands of the producer.

“Er…we burned buses…er…we resisted security patrols, it was all rioting,” he muttered, sitting in a T-shirt surrounded by a shotgun and pistols, weapons the presenter said police found on him.

Opposition activists said that Selawaya’s family said he was in fact arrested before the uprising for unrelated crimes. The Syrian government restricts media access, making it hard to verify reports.

REPORTS OF TORTURE

For more than a year, peaceful protesters demanding Assad’s overthrow have been arrested, tortured and killed, human rights groups say. But dissidents have increasingly resorted to armed ambushes and bomb attacks on elements of state security, and a recent Human Rights Watch report accused the armed opposition of kidnappings, torture and executions.

State media has never reported on government abuses but aired “terrorist confessions” early last year when activists posted videos of Assad’s troops firing on demonstrations and there was little evidence of an armed uprising.

For many Syrians, pro- and anti-Assad, the confessions are a running joke.

“I do not think that Syrian television lies in all its stories, but the information in these confessions is really conflicting and confusing,” said Rami, 33, a government worker who, like other ordinary Syrians quoted in this article, was interviewed via Skype from Damascus and asked to be identified by his first name only, for security reasons.

Reem, a 32-year-old journalist, said she never trusted state media, seeing it as a mouthpiece of Assad’s inner circle, but the TV confessions were a new low.

“If they were actually criminals, they should be sent to courts, not to a TV studio,” she said.

“The confessions can be pretty funny,” the producer said. “They are clearly illogical.”

“Our editors would ask us to think up stories that will be believable. For example, if we had a man who was from a certain city, we would tell him to talk about specific streets or confess to a crime committed recently in that city,” she said.

“There were some confessors who seem to have signs of torture but I did not ask too many questions,” she said.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

In late April, pro-government news channel “Addounia” aired what it said was a confession by “terrorist” Ali Othman, who activists say was arrested in March after he helped foreign journalists escape from the besieged city of Homs.

The interview, which was over an hour long, was publicised a few days beforehand.

In the teaser, the Addounia interviewer walks through dark corridors as tense music plays. He creaks open a metal-barred door and walks inside a prison cell, where Ali Othman sits with his head in his hands.

Othman rises and the next shot shows him sitting opposite the presenter, both spotlighted in a dark room.

“Stay tuned Inside Baba Amr,” words on the screen read, referring to the district in Homs that was heavily shelled by the Syrian government because it was supposedly swarming with “armed terrorists.”

In the interview, Othman said that people attending anti-Assad protests pretended to be peaceful but had hidden guns under their jackets to attack security members.

He also described running a media centre in Baba Amr, smuggling foreign journalists in and out of the country and organising dissident protesters.

Fellow activists said the interview was conducted under duress and Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement just after Othman was arrested that there were reports that he had been tortured.

Suriya’s ex-producer said that many who confessed appeared afraid.

“I sometimes used to wonder why Suriya wanted people to make these confessions,” she said.

“My managing editor once told us that the goal is to show people that the government is in control and also so that parents see what happens if they let their children oppose the government.”

Aisha, a 42-year-old housewife who comes from the same minority Alawite sect as President Assad, said that although she does not trust the confessions, she knows they have a use.

“I watch the confessions in front of my children and try to convince them that they are real because I want them to be scared of what will happen if they look for trouble,” she said.

Reuters

Photo: Syria’s State television airs interviews with men confessing to acts of violence, but the interviews are mocked by many Syrians

Greek state television said that the date for a new round of elections had been set for June 17, though by early Wednesday no official announcement had yet been made.

After the failure of the last-ditch attempt to form a unity government that would honor the country’s commitments to its foreign lenders, President Karolos Papoulias began planning for a caretaker government until the vote, with Panayiotis Pikramenos taking the helm, state television reported.

Mr. Pikramenos, the head of one of Greece’s three highest courts, visited the presidential mansion on Wednesday afternoon to be officially appointed. In a televised conversation between the two men, Mr. Pikramenos said the role was “a great burden” but thanked the president for “putting your trust in me.” Mr. Pikramenos, whose name means “embittered,” added wistfully that he had perhaps the most appropriate name for the job.

The call for new elections shuddered across the euro zone, where concerns flared that rising anti-bailout forces in Greece’s Parliament could lead the nation to default on its debts, setting off new troubles in Portugal and Ireland, which are also highly indebted and rely on foreign loans.

While the new French president, François Hollande, was in Germany to express his concerns about excessive austerity with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the dissolution of the Greek state accelerated. Mr. Papoulias told party leaders on Tuesday that nearly $900 million had been pulled from Greek banks on Monday alone, and that the Greek central bank had warned of “a great fear that could develop into a panic.”

“The next two days things will get worse,” Mr. Papoulias said.

Since the end of 2009, when the crisis first hit, Greeks have withdrawn an estimated $4 billion in savings a month from the country’s banks, according to the country’s central bank, and $6.5 billion was pulled in January alone. Such fears are certain to provide the backdrop for an election campaign in which the two once-dominant parties, the Socialists and New Democracy, attempt to win voters back after collapsing at the polls.

While the voting last week was cathartic for many Greeks, the failure to form a government underscored the depth of the troubles the country faces. The debt crisis here last week precipitated the collapse of a political order that helped drive the country into a downward spiral and now seems powerless to steer it out.

“This is the problem of the country,” said Loukas Tsoukalis, the president of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, a research group in Athens. “On the one hand there is a failed political class, on the other demagogues who ride on anger.”

The developments have exasperated Europe’s wealthy northern tier states, especially Germany. On Tuesday, Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Hollande, in their first joint news conference, said they hoped Greece would stay within the euro. But behind the scenes, the sentiment is growing in Berlin that Greece should be encouraged to exit the euro zone for the greater good of other economies that are more dedicated to mending their tattered finances, including Ireland, Spain and Portugal, said Paul De Grauwe, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics.

“The feeling is that Greece has been a terrible drag on the whole system, and if Greece leaves and we can set up a firewall that will guard against contagion, in the end this may be better for the euro zone,” he said.

Yet the risks of such brinkmanship could run high. No one knows if the financial defenses Europe raised against the possible domino effect of a Greek default or exit will work.

Nor is it clear that the European Central Bank would be willing to spend the hundreds of billions of euros it would take to maintain confidence in the broader European banking system, which still holds piles of sovereign bonds from Greece, Spain, Portugal and other nations that have fallen into difficulty.

“The trouble with Greece is that any effort to get it out of the euro is likely to intensify pressure on other countries,” Mr. De Grauwe said. “The scenario of contagion is a very serious one.”

There was much finger-pointing after the breakdown in talks on Tuesday. The Socialists’ leader, Evangelos Venizelos, said that he hoped Greeks would make a more “historically well-considered” choice when they returned to the polls. He added that the talks on a unity government had failed “because certain individuals put their party’s interest above the good of the country.”

His remarks were aimed at Syriza, or the Coalition of the Radical Left, which placed second in the elections on May 6 and would not join a unity government. Polls show Syriza would finish first in new elections on a platform of scrapping Greece’s loan agreement and the austerity measures that have come with it — and possibly precipitating the country’s exit from the euro zone.

Alexis Tsipras, Syriza’s 37-year-old leader, has said that if Greece stops using the euro, it will be because its loan agreement terms were impossible to meet. Mr. Tsipras’s political rivals and critics consider him to be immature and a risk to Greek stability, but he has irrefutably changed the terms of the debate.

The Socialists and New Democracy, who had their worst electoral showings in 40 years after signing Greece’s second loan agreement with creditors in February, have said that they, too, would seek to renegotiate some of the terms — an indication that no Greek government can enforce the current deal.

Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy leader, said Tuesday that his party would seek to modify the agreement to increase growth and ensure that the country remains part of the single currency bloc. “The message of the Greek people is clear: yes to the euro, no to the austerity that is crushing the Greek people,” he said.

When the government of the technocratic prime minister, Lucas Papademos, signed a second loan agreement in February — about $165 billion in loans and the largest debt write-down in history in exchange for Greece’s slashing of its budget deficit, pushing down wages, raising taxes and committing to a range of structural changes — political leaders said the deal was the only alternative to default.

Yet many Greek officials now acknowledge that the terms are pushing the country deeper into recession and making it impossible to close an ever-widening budget deficit, a view that is becoming more widespread outside of Greece. Still, it remained to be seen whether international lenders would be prepared to bend on any of the terms.

Mr. Papoulias summoned party leaders on Wednesday to name a new caretaker government. Under Greek law, such a government should comprise “well respected” individuals and the prime minister would be a top judge.

The meeting descended into the some of the same fractiousness and political wrangling present in days of failed negotiations to form a government. Emerging from the talks the Communist Party leader, Aleka Papariga, told reporters that “political games were played even in talks for the appointment of a caretaker prime minister.”

The leaders of the Socialist and New Democracy parties had supported a proposal by the president that would have Mr. Papademos stay on in the role of prime minister until the vote. But Mr. Tsipras, the head of the Coalition of the Radical Left, had pushed for a veteran Socialist to be appointed. The leader of the Democratic Left, Fotis Kouvelis, said he had insisted that the premier be “politically neutral.”

Without political agreement on the caretaker prime minister, the president, in accordance with the constitution, named a top judge.
By LIZ ALDERMAN and RACHEL DONADIO
NY Times

Photo: Panagiotis Pikramenos, left, the head of one of Greece’s three highest courts, visits President Karolos Papoulias on Wednesday.

As Safir which is closely associated with Hezbollah reported that according to its sources, several countries informed “relevant parties in Lebanon of this information, which was confirmed by similar data available to some Lebanese security services.”

“This information reveals that a terrorist group… recently entered Lebanon to implement acts of sabotage, including the assassination of several key Lebanese figures, including Berri.” The paper said

On April 4 the Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea survived an assassination attempt when he was shot at by “snipers” as he was walking with bodyguards outside his residence in Maarab. The bullets reportedly left holes in the wall of his house.

In January, security agencies urged Berri and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat to take precautions as they might be the target of an assassination plot.

On Tuesday, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported that the security agencies succeeded in the past few days in uncovering a terrorist network with local, Arab, and European links.

It said that the confessions of one of the detainees led to the arrest of Sunni Islamist Shadi al-Mawlawi, a development which sparked three days of deadly armed clashes in the northern city of Tripoli .

Military Investigative Judge Nabil Wehbi on Monday issued an arrest warrant against Mawlawi for “belonging to an armed terrorist group, National News Agency reported on Monday

Wehbi also indicted two other men identified as Hamzeh Mahmoud Tarabay and Qatari national Abdel Aziz Attieh. The two were released on bail while Attieh was also banned from leaving Lebanon.
Five other members of the same group have also been uncovered.

The team’s vehicles were struck by the blast Tuesday during a mission in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun. None of the observers was wounded, but they had to spend the night with rebel forces in the area. Earlier Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. team, said he had spoken with the observers in Khan Sheikhoun by telephone and that they “told us that they are happy and safe where they are.”

Syria-based U.N. spokesman Hassan Seklawi said U.N. members picked up the team around noon Wednesday.

“They left in one convoy in the direction of Hama,” Seklawi said referring to a central city south of Khan Sheikhoun.

Tuesday’s attack, which came minutes after witnesses said regime forces gunned down mourners at a funeral procession nearby, dealt a fresh blow to international envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan and the U.N. effort to monitor compliance with a troubled cease-fire agreement.

Activists said the violence continued Wednesday with regime forces opening fire from the outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group, said the heavy machine-gun fire has so far prevented people from holding funerals for some of the 20 mourners who were killed at the funeral on Tuesday.

The U.N. said rebel forces had given the observers shelter in the town, which has witnessed anti-government protests since an uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime began in March last year.

Ahmad Fawzi, Annan’s spokesman, said in a statement that six staff members were “reportedly being treated well” while in rebel hands.

Fawzi said the observers were caught up in the explosion as they met with the rebel Free Syrian Army. He said three vehicles were damaged.

More than 200 U.N. observers have been deployed throughout Syria to monitor the cease-fire agreement, which has been repeatedly violated by both sides since it took effect on April 12.

The bombing was at least the second time the U.N. observers have been caught up in Syria’s violence. Last week, a roadside bomb struck a Syrian military truck in the south of the country just seconds after Mood rode by in a convoy.

It was not clear who was behind the blast and no one claimed responsibility.

A video posted by activists online appeared to show the exact moment the U.N. vehicle was struck. The video shows two white vehicles clearly marked “U.N” with people milling around it, and two others parked a few meters (yards) behind. Slippers apparently left behind by the mourners running away from the shooting earlier are seen strewn about on the ground.

The blast blew off the front of the first vehicle and sent up a plume of smoke as people screamed and frantically ran for cover. The four cars are then seen slowly driving away.

It was not clear how close the observers were to the funeral shootings, but if confirmed, a regime attack on civilians directly in front of the observer mission could put pressure on them to describe publicly what they are seeing in Syria. They report back to the U.N. but have not publicized their findings.

Syria’s state-run TV, meanwhile, reported Wednesday that authorities released 250 people who were involved in the uprising. Assad has issued several pardons releasing thousands of detainees since the crisis began.

The Observatory also said Syrian forces opened fire at the Naziheen Palestinian refugee camp in the southern city of Daraa, killing four people. The pro-government TV station Ikhbariyah blamed members of “an armed terrorist group,” saying they fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the camp, killing a 4-year-old girl and wounding 15 other people.

The Syrian uprising began with mostly peaceful protests calling for change, but a relentless government crackdown led many in the opposition to take up arms. Some soldiers also have switched sides and joined forces with the rebels.

Associated Press

Obama administration officials emphasized that the United States is neither supplying nor funding the lethal material, which includes antitank weaponry. Instead, they said, the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

“We are increasing our nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, and we continue to coordinate our efforts with friends and allies in the region and beyond in order to have the biggest impact on what we are collectively doing,” said a senior State Department official, one of several U.S. and foreign government officials who discussed the evolving effort on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. contacts with the rebel military and the information-sharing with gulf nations mark a shift in Obama administration policy as hopes dim for a political solution to the Syrian crisis. Many officials now consider an expanding military confrontation to be inevitable.

Material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border. Opposition activists who two months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said this week that the flow of weapons — most still bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military — has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.

Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood also said it has opened its own supply channel to the rebels, using resources from wealthy private individuals and money from gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said Mulham al-Drobi, a member of the Brotherhood’s executive committee.

The new supplies reversed months of setbacks for the rebels that forced them to withdraw from their stronghold in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs and many other areas in Idlib and elsewhere.

“Large shipments have got through,” another opposition figure said. “Some areas are loaded with weapons.”

The effect of the new arms appeared evident in Monday’s clash between opposition and government forces over control of the rebel-held city of Rastan, near Homs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel forces who overran a government base had killed 23 Syrian soldiers.

Administration officials also held talks in Washington this week with a delegation of Kurds from sparsely populated eastern Syria, where little violence has occurred. The talks included discussion of what one U.S. official said remained the “theoretical” possibility of opening a second front against Assad’s forces that would compel him to move resources from the west.

Syria will also be on the agenda at this weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago, according to administration officials.

Although the alliance has repeatedly said it will not become involved in Syria, Turkey has indicated that it may invoke Article IV of the NATO Charter, which would open the door to consultations on threats to Turkish security and consideration of mutual defense provisions of Article V of the charter

Last month, after Syrian forces fatally shot four fleeing Syrians who had crossed into Turkey, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that under Article V, “NATO has responsibilities to protect the Turkish border.”

The Turks, who have grown increasingly anxious about the growing conflict in their neighboring country, have resisted direct military involvement without the international legitimacy of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Efforts to pass a resolution authorizing any intervention beyond humanitarian aid have been blocked by opposition from Russia and China.

But Turkey’s position has been evolving, with military officials who once opposed any kind of non-political intervention now seeing the region becoming increasingly involved in the crisis. Shiites and Sunnis in neighboring Lebanon battled this week over the Syrian situation, raising concern both in Ankara and Washington.

Officials in the region said that Turkey’s main concern is where the United States stands, and whether it and others will support armed protection for a safe zone along the border or back other options that have been discussed.

The United States and its allies remain formally committed to a U.N. peace plan being spearheaded by former secretary general Kofi Annan. Nearly two-thirds of an authorized 300 unarmed U.N. military monitors have arrived in Syria, with the rest due by the end of this month.

But even Annan has acknowledged the initiative has failed so far to significantly quell the violence or make progress toward a political transition. U.S. officials have said they feel constrained from declaring the mission a failure, at least until the full complement of monitors arrives. Annan himself has expressed pessimism over prospects for success.

Opposition figures said they have been in direct contact with State Department officials to designate worthy rebel recipients of arms and pinpoint locations for stockpiles, but U.S. officials said that there currently are no military or intelligence personnel on the ground in Syria.

The Pentagon has prepared options for Syria extending all the way to air assaults to destroy the nation’s air defenses. U.S. officials, however, have said that such involvement remains very unlikely. Instead, they said, the United States and others are moving forward toward increased coordination of intelligence and arming for the rebel forces.

The Sunni-led gulf states, which would see the fall of Assad as a blow against Shiite Iran, would welcome such assistance, but they would like a more formal approach. One gulf official described the Obama administration’s gradual evolution from an initial refusal to consider any action outside the political realm to a current position falling “between ‘here’s what we need to do’ and ‘we’re doing it.’”

“Various people are hoping that the U.S. will step up its efforts to undermine or confront the Syrian regime,” the gulf official said. “We want them to get rid” of Assad.

Since the uprising began early last year, U.S. efforts to promote a political solution have been stymied by Assad’s political intransigence and his ongoing military assault on Syrian towns and cities, as well as the opposition’s failure to agree on a unified political leadership or game plan.

Despite administration hopes that the Sunni-led Syrian National Congress would become an umbrella organization, it has failed to win support from minority Syrian Christians, Kurds, Druze and Assad’s Alawite sect. All have resisted what they say is the group’s domination by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Free Syrian Army, the opposition military force, has resisted direction from the fractured political opposition. Its troops, many of them Syrian army defectors, are said to operate in independent entities spread across Syria, leading the United States and others in the past to express caution about assisting them.

Washington Post

“The clashes in Tripoli have nothing to do with the Syrian crisis.” He stressed

Shadi al-Mawlawi’s arrest by General Security agents in Tripoli on Saturday had sparked three days of deadly violence between the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen in the northern capital

Commenting on Mawlawi’s arrest Suleiman said: “He was arrested based on information obtained by the security agencies and therefore the judiciary will have the final say on his release.”

“This means that any street action that demands the release of al-Mawlawi is aimed at destabilizing the situation,” he added

“The army is performing its duties for the sake of all the Lebanese and they should therefore back its efforts to restore stability,” the president said

“Lebanon is committed to combating terrorism based on its interest to maintain its national unity and commitment to international resolution,” Suleiman said

Military Investigative Judge Nabil Wehbi on Monday issued an arrest warrant against Mawlawi for “belonging to an armed terrorist group, National News Agency reported on Monday

Wehbi also indicted two other men identified as Hamzeh Mahmoud Tarabay and Qatari national Abdel Aziz Attieh. The two were released on bail while Attieh was also banned from leaving Lebanon.
Five other members of the same group have also been uncovered.

Suleiman voiced his confidence that national unity in Lebanon “cannot be shaken”, saying that Lebanon will not once again serve as an open ground for foreign disputes.

“Stability may be targeted for political gains and there are currently many powers that are seeking to make such gains?” he asked.

Commenting on fears that civil war may erupt in Lebanon, he remarked: “The Taif Accord has introduced calm in Lebanon.”