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Lebanon: Aoun Bargains with Interior, Finance Ministries to Keep Control Over Energy

President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib during talks at the Baabda Palace (Reuters/ Mohammed Azakir)
President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib during talks at the Baabda Palace (Reuters/ Mohammed Azakir)
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Lebanon: Aoun Bargains with Interior, Finance Ministries to Keep Control Over Energy

President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib during talks at the Baabda Palace (Reuters/ Mohammed Azakir)
President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib during talks at the Baabda Palace (Reuters/ Mohammed Azakir)

Lebanese President Michel Aoun is responsible for the delay in the formation of the new government, Lebanese political sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The president’s first priority, according to the sources, is to bring back his son-in-law, former Minister and MP Gebran Bassil, to the forefront, and to reserve the largest number of ministerial seats for his Christian bloc, including the ministry of Energy.

The political sources revealed that the General Security chief, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, has been working behind the scene to resolve the nodes that are hindering the cabinet formation. Ibrahim has recently met with Aoun, who informed him that he favored a government of 24 specialists of political background, “to facilitate the implementation of reforms.”

According to the sources, Aoun supports, in one way or another, Bassil’s request to implement rotation in the redistribution of portfolios to the different sects. They said he suggested that the financial and the interior ministries be the share of the Christians, in exchange for assigning the defense and foreign ministries to the Muslims.

The same sources explained that Aoun wanted to convey a message that the Shiites’ insistence on preserving the finance portfolio - which grants them the authority to sign the decrees of a financial nature - does not give them the right to veto the redistribution of ministerial portfolios.

In other words, Aoun - according to these sources - absolutely refuses any party to use the right of veto to prevent the allocation of the ministry of Energy to a Christian minister. The president considers the energy as an exclusive right to his political party, led by Bassil.

Therefore, the sources said Aoun was bargaining with the Interior and Finance ministries, in exchange for maintaining the energy within his share.

Moreover, the president’s insistence on forming an expanded government was aimed at bringing Bassil to the forefront, in light of the rejection of the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb party to participate in the government, according to the sources.

However, Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib would not approve a cabinet of 24 ministers and insisted on excluding Bassil from his ongoing talks with Aoun.

Adib is also working to prepare a draft ministerial lineup that he would present to the Baabda Palace at the end of this week.

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Syria: Elaborate Military Tunnel Complex Linked to Assad's Palace

A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
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Syria: Elaborate Military Tunnel Complex Linked to Assad's Palace

A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP

On the slopes of Mount Qasyun which overlooks Damascus, a network of tunnels links a military complex, tasked with defending the Syrian capital, to the presidential palace facing it.
The tunnels, seen by an AFP correspondent, are among secrets of president Bashar al-Assad's rule exposed since the opposition toppled him on December 8.

"We entered this enormous barracks of the Republican Guard after the liberation" of Damascus sent Assad fleeing to Moscow, said Mohammad Abu Salim, a military official from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the alliance that overthrew Assad.

"We found a vast network of tunnels which lead to the presidential palace" on a neighboring hill, Salim said.

During Assad's rule, Qasyun was off limits to the people of Damascus because it was an ideal location for snipers -- the great view includes the presidential palaces and other government buildings.

It was also from this mountain that artillery units for years pounded opposition-held areas at the gates of the capital.

An AFP correspondent entered the Guard complex of two bunkers containing vast rooms reserved for its soldiers. The bunkers were equipped with telecommunications gear, electricity, a ventilation system and weapons supplies.

Other simpler tunnels were dug out of the rock to hold ammunition.

Despite such elaborate facilities, Syria's army collapsed, with troops abandoning tanks and other gear as opposition fighters advanced from their northern stronghold to the capital in less than two weeks,.

On the grounds of the Guard complex a statue of the president's brother Bassel al-Assad, atop a horse, has been toppled and Bassel's head severed.

Bassel al-Assad died in a 1994 road accident. He had been the presumed successor to his father Hafez al-Assad who set up the paranoid, secretive, repressive system of government that Bashar inherited when his father died in 2000.

In the immense Guard camp now, former opposition fighters use pictures of Bashar al-Assad and his father for target practice.

Tanks and heavy weapons still sit under arched stone shelters.

Resembling a macabre outdoor art installation, large empty rusted barrels with attached fins pointing skyward are lined up on the ground, their explosives further away.

"The regime used these barrels to bomb civilians in the north of Syria," Abu Salim said.

The United Nations denounced Bashar's use of such weapons dropped from helicopters or airplanes against civilian areas held by Assad's opponents during Syria's years-long civil war that began in 2011.