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Lebanon to bury slain MP
14/06/2007 12:17 - (SA)
Beirut - Lebanon observed a day of mourning on Thursday to bury anti-Syrian MP Walid Eido, whose death in a Beirut bomb blast was the latest in a string of killings the ruling coalition has blamed on Damascus.
Eido was a vocal critic of the Syrian regime, and his assassination in a powerful seafront bombing stoked fears of instability in a country battling deep sectarian and political divisions.
It came amid fighting between the army and diehard Islamists in the north that was continuing into its fourth week.
Eido's murder was roundly condemned as a "terrorist" act, with US President President George Bush accusing indirectly Syria of seeking to destabilise Lebanon's government, which faces a staunch Syrian-backed opposition.
It will be the focus of crisis talks on Friday in Cairo by Arab foreign ministers, following a formal request by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora who said Eido's murder was part of a plan to destabilise Lebanon.
The bodies of Eido, and his eldest son Khaled, who died with him, will be taken from hospital to the family home before mid-day prayers and then burial in a Beirut cemetery.
Two bodyguards and six other people were killed in the blast, and another 11 people were wounded.
Security boosted
Security measures, already drastic due to a wave of deadly bombings in the past two years, have been further boosted in Beirut.
Banks, shops and schools were closed in a sign of mourning.
The 65-year-old judge and Beirut MP was a member of the Future Movement of MP Saad Hariri, whose father and former premier Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in a similar seafront blast in February 2005.
"The terrorism of the Syrian regime defies the tribunal: Walid Eido a martyr," read on Thursday the front-page headline of the Al-Mustaqbal newspaper owned by the Hariri family.
Lebanon's ruling coalition has accused Syria of seeking to eliminate members of the parliamentary majority, which has now been left with a majority of only four of the 126 living members of the house after a string of killings.
It also accuses Damascus of trying to block the creation of an international court to try suspects in the Hariri killing that forced Syria to end 29 years of military domination of its smaller neighbour.
"70, 69, 68 ... it is not acceptable to doubt it. It is even criminal to doubt it. Somewhere, somebody is keeping a morbid countdown and is seeking to cross the fatal number of 65," under which the anti-Syrian bloc would lose its majority in parliament, said French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour.
- AFP
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