US arms messing Lebanon

	21/10/2007 Source almanartv Prominent British Journalist Robert Fisk warned of "phantoms now returning to haunt Lebanon." In his article in the Independent, Fisk described Lebanon as a country "peopled with ghosts" adding that the militias which tore it apart more than 30 years ago, are real. Fisk warned of "a sheer scale of weaponry arriving in Lebanon" believed to have come from the vast stock of 190,000 rifles and pistols which the US military "lost" when they handed them out to Iraqi police officers without registering their numbers or destination. "Fouad Siniora's Lebanese government – supplied by the US with recent shipments of new weapons for the official Lebanese army – has now admitted that militias are also being created among Muslim pro-government groups. Widespread reports that Saad Hariri – son of the assassinated ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri – has himself created an embryo militia have been officially denied. But a number of armed Hariri supporters initially opened fire into the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian camp after its takeover by pro-Al-Qaida gunmen last April. Hariri's men also have forces in Beirut (supposedly unarmed) and again this is denied. Those who suspect the opposite, however, might like to check the register of the Mayflower Hotel in the western sector of Beirut," Fisk wrote. Siniora's government, according to the British journalist, is well aware of the dangers that these new developments represent in a country in which only Hezbollah, classed as a "resistance" movement, hitherto had permission to bear arms. "The American plan to chop up Iraq, it seems, is another ghost that has crept silently into Lebanon," Fisk concluded.