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Rival Lebanese factions begin dialogue on Hezbollah weapons
By The Associated Press
Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon 

Lebanon's deeply divided rival factions on Tuesday began national reconciliation talks on the controversial issue of Hezbollah's weapons amid skepticism the dialogue can help bridge differences.

Leaders of 14 political factions met at the presidential palace for the talks headed by President Michel Suleiman. The dialogue is part of a peace deal reached in Qatar in May that ended sectarian clashes and defused a long running political crisis.

The agenda is to focus on a national defense strategy that could eventually integrate Hezbollah weapons into the army. But on the eve of the talks, it was clear the Hezbollah-led minority coalition and the Western-backed parliamentary majority remain at odds over the fate of Hezbollah's arsenal.
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The Iran and Syria-backed Hezbollah has resisted the calls to disarm and balked at a requirement to disarm included in the United Nations resolution that ended the monthlong Second Lebanon War between Israel and the militant group in 2006. The group claims its weapons are necessary to protect and defend Lebanon against Israeli attacks.

"I am completely confident that we can adopt a strategy that protects Lebanon based on our armed forces and benefiting from the resources and capabilities of the resistance," Suleiman said in his opening speech, referring to Hezbollah. He did not elaborate.

Following his speech, the participants, including Arab League Chief Amr Moussa who was invited to attend as an observer, went into closed session.

The national dialogue is expected to be a long and drawn out process. The first session will likely focus on formalities and forging an outline for future sessions, before wading into the thorny issue of Hezbollah's weapons.

Mohammed Raad, a senior Hezbollah lawmaker who will represent the Shi'ite Muslim group at the talks, implicitly renewed Hezbollah's rejection of local and international demands to disarm.

"Defending ourselves is a right that does not require a decision. This issue can be debated in theory but the answer is clear and has already been decided," he said Sunday.

Lawmaker Saad Hariri, who heads the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, said such thinking reduces the upcoming dialogue to a mere photo opportunity.

Dialogue talks were first held in Lebanon in June 2006 but failed to make headway.

Hezbollah's decision a month later to kidnap two Israel Defense Forces soldiers, triggering the ruinous 34-day war, further aggravated the debate over Hezbollah's arsenal.

Since that war, Lebanon has been rocked by successive internal crises and spates of sectarian fighting that has brought Lebanon to the brink of civil war. Further dialogue sessions in Beirut in Nov. 2006 and in France in July 2007 failed to produce any results.

The Doha accord put an end to street fighting and resulted in the election of former army commander Suleiman as compromise president and the formation of a national unity government that gave Hezbollah and its allies veto power over all major cabinet decisions.

In outlining its future policy, the government has recognized Hezbollah's right to retain its weapons for liberating Lebanese territory occupied by Israel.

But leaders on both sides of the political divide remain entrenched in their position, and sporadic clashes and scattered violence has continued.

A bomb last week killed a Druze politician who recently helped reconcile rival factions.

On Monday, six hand grenade attacks hit different areas of the Muslim sector of Beirut, damaging cars and shops but causing no casualties. In the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon, three Palestinians were killed in tit-for-tat assassinations Monday that underline the lawlessness of the camp and the challenge it and 11 other Palestinian camps pose for the Lebanese government.

Overnight, one person was killed and two were wounded in a shootout blamed on sectarian tensions in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley town of Taalabaya.
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