What can or should a new Lebanese president do with Syria? What is most needed, for a start, is consistency based on principles. There are long-standing doubts about Syrian policy under the two President Assads, including the assassination of many prominent Lebanese, including Kamal Jumblatt in 1977, Bashir Gemayel in 1982, the mufti of the republic, Sheikh Hassan Khaled, in 1989 and Rafik Hariri in 2005. While one should not lay direct responsibility for the first three of these crimes at the door of Bashar Assad, who came to power after the killings, the system he presides over has shown no desire to make amends.
The misdeeds of former high-ranking Syrian officials such as Abdul Halim Khaddam or Rifaat Assad also remain, even if the two are enemies of the current leadership. Their case shows the need to focus on removing impunity, regardless of our attitude toward the present Syrian regime.
The findings of the United Nations investigation of the assassination of the late Rafik Hariri and other Lebanese since October 2004 are graver. Until the current UN investigator or his successor shows the courage and professionalism expected, the shadow of Syrian involvement remains marked by Detlev Mehlis' findings. I have criticized investigator Serge Brammertz, and would continue if elected. After two years of reports, the Lebanese and Syrian publics, and the world, are entitled to know more. Either the investigator has no evidence of the involvement of the Syrian leadership and its Lebanese allies - in which case Mehlis and the initial UN investigator of the case, Peter Fitzgerald, were wrong, and Brammertz should say so publicly (after all four people, at least, have been sitting in prison without trial for over two years now); or Brammertz thinks the conclusions of his predecessors were correct, and he must say so publicly.
The policy of any new Lebanese president has, therefore, been made excruciatingly difficult by the fog created by the investigator's performance over the past two years. If no evidence is forthcoming of the Syrian leadership's involvement, we should accept this and mend the political rift the murder has so dramatically occasioned. If we have cause to believe that Syria was involved, then any new president's attitude must depend on the level and role of the accused, and the reaction of the Syrian regime to it. The bottom line is that any accused should stand trial, however high in the governing system - in Lebanon or Syria. Any other result will deepen the mistrust between the two countries, and the risk of open military confrontation. Hence my continued hope that Bashar Assad was not involved in Hariri's assassination and other crimes.
The international investigation notwithstanding, any new president will also have to address other matters of Lebanese policy toward Syria.
I do not much care about delineating borders or even an exchange of embassies. Other issues are much graver, particularly relating to the presidency. In September 2004, I published an open letter warning Assad against the coerced extension of Emile Lahoud's term in office. At this moment of Lebanese history, the Syrian president must desist from opposing presidential change. In fact, he must encourage his allies in Lebanon to enter the electoral process without Syria supporting this or that candidate. Any other attitude will accelerate the rift between our two countries. If Syria's regime continues to frustrate a change of president, or if it tries to bargain over specific candidates (which the Western powers must not do either), the consequences could prove incalculably dangerous for Syria as well as for Lebanon. Violence will engulf our two societies.
One sentence displaying responsible conciliation from Assad would suffice: Syria, he should say, desires a constitutional change in Lebanon's presidency, and considers it has no say in whom that president should be.
Let me conclude with a positive commitment. This coming November, a conference will convene to address Middle East peace. Syria should be part of it, and Lebanon can help Damascus in the return of the occupied Golan Heights and in a resolution of other outstanding issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, the conference should be held in Beirut.
I was an early active advocate, while still a student at London University in 1987, of a comprehensive peace conference in the Middle East. Such a conference happened in Madrid in 1991, although it was unfortunate that both the Syrian and Israeli leaders entered into the talks with a negative spirit. In 2000, I wrote a detailed legal study of the Israeli-Syrian frontier situation, arguing for Syrian access to the Sea of Galilee on the basis of a more solid grounding than the borders of June 5, 1967. This could be Lebanon's plan at the November conference, after a president is elected.
Hopefully, by then the UN investigation will have clarified responsibility for the Hariri murder, and Assad will have acted positively toward a presidential change in Lebanon without succumbing to partisanship.
Chibli Mallat, a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah and EU Jean Monnet chair at St. Joseph's University in Beirut, is a candidate for the Lebanese presidency. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
