Introduction to the evening news 26-09-2011

PM Najib Mikati is seizing the opportunity to try and break his international isolation at the office of the U.N. Secretary General in New York while Lebanon is presiding over the U.N. Security Council. However, this does not exempt him from once more sitting at his desk in a Grand Serail that is fully immersed in the STL funding issue. Whether funding goes through or not, the post-funding phase will be nothing like the phase before. This issue will determine whether Mikati remains a genuine prime minister or one in charge of a caretaker government.     

Prior to his arrival in New York, PM Mikati touched on the importance of not being selective in fulfilling international resolutions. He repeated this while meeting with the journalists accompanying him to New York, and repeated it once again during his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Clinton’s statements were brief compared to those of her assistant, Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, who gave a clear stance on how Lebanon should deal with Syria.     

While Washington was beginning to thaw relations with PM Najib Mikati, it was beginning to put relations with Patriarch Beshara Rai on ice. Rai’s visit to the U.S. turned into a pastoral one, after Washington was scrubbed from the agenda.   

The question is now: If the U.S. Administration wanted to send a message to Patriarch Rai, how much will the Lebanese diaspora, or some parts of it, commit to this message? And what will be the reaction of the other parts of the diaspora? Will this visit create a schism within them?   

It seems that this exchange of messages did not start in the U.S. but in southern Lebanon; in fact, former PM Fouad Siniora and MP Bahia Hariri made a loud gesture by boycotting the Msayleh lunch hosted by House Speaker Nabih Berri in honor of Patriarch Rai. The official explanations claimed a desired avoidance of Berri, but the fact of the matter remains: Siniora and Hariri were absent from Rai’s lunch.