Mikati’s latest promises that Lebanon will respect international resolutions kicked off his round of meetings across the globe, the most important of which will be with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in New York. The doors that have opened for Mikati since meeting with European officials at the Friends of Libya conference in Paris do not imply Western endorsement of the current political situation in Lebanon.
Mikati, who only a week ago came on television to state that Lebanon must abide by all international resolutions, has announced that the results of this litmus test have proven inconclusive and he must drop the issue for the moment in order to avoid unnecessary conflict. He emphasized that Lebanon cannot pick and choose which resolutions to abide by and ignore those that do not serve our needs.
Should Mikati spend precious political capital to convince Hezbollah, Michel Aoun and Nabih Berri to accept these resolutions, or will the domestic and regional developments do the job for him? What if President Sleiman, PM Mikati and MP Jumblatt fail to gain passage for funding the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in 2011, will they manage to renew the Tribunal’s mandate in March 2012? Or is Mikati preparing himself for the role of caretaker?
While we are waiting, the Maronite Patriarch’s visits and the repercussions of his latest statements are still raising eyebrows and reshuffling the political cards. Today, he avoided making inflammatory remarks although he was warmly welcomed by Hezbollah and their Shiite supporters in Khiam, Nabatieh and Bint Jbeil after his morning visit to the Druze region of Bayada.
On the Arab scene, amid the eruption of protests and revolutions, King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia led his own, off-white, revolution, declaring that women now have the right to stand for office in municipal elections and serve on the Shura Council in the next round of political elections, two years from now; all according to Sharia law.