Transcript
Bilal Y. Saab: Let me start off by reminding you of what happened in 2007 and what sort of baggage Lebanon has inherited into 2008. The country is limping into 2008 amid chaos, political violence, terrorism, government paralysis, and a damaged economy. There are not very good memories we can remember from 2007. The assassination of two parliamentarians; an army general who was supposed to be head of the army in case Michel Suleiman were to be president, and I am talking about Francois Hajj; a 3-month battle with a terrorist group in the north in Nahr al-Bared; street politics resulting in sectarian clashes in the streets of Beirut which were quite scary, actually, and reminded most Lebanese of the days of the civil war, and the list goes on. The bad news is, if this was not enough, that none of this is actually going to go away in 2008, and not a single issue is going to be solved in my judgment at least unless Lebanese political factions, the opposition and the governing coalition, start adopting a mentality of win-win instead of zero-sum.
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