LEBANON: Pro-Syrians in Lebanon are trying to shift blame for Hariri's death, writes Lara Marlowe in Beirut
The method used to kill the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and 18 other people on February 14th - and the evidence or lack thereof - have become a propaganda weapon.
A whole set of political beliefs is inextricably tied to the identity of Hariri's killers. For the anti-Syrian opposition, there is no doubt Hariri was murdered by Damascus and/or a combination of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services, because he was about to make public his support for the opposition.
The pro-Syrian Lebanese government which fell last Monday made two failed attempts to shift blame for the atrocity. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, an unknown Islamist group released a videotape of an alleged Palestinian suicide bomber.
The claim was so preposterous that it earned an unprecedented denial by al-Qaeda.
Then the interior minister Suleiman Frangieh discovered a Byzantine plot by fundamentalist hajj pilgrims from northern Lebanon returning to Australia.
That one was shot down by the Australian embassy.
For nearly three weeks the opposition has speculated that the killers planted the bomb - which has grown in size from 350kg to one tonne - under the road. Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services allegedly used maps of underground sewerage and electrical tunnels.
But yesterday the pro-Syrian newspaper As-Safir reported that a security videotape from the HSBC bank across the street from the bomb site showed a German-made truck crashing into Hariri's cortege.
Abdallah Kassir, one of the Shia Muslim Hizbullah party's 12 members of parliament, describes Hariri's killing as "a huge crime against civil peace and national unity in Lebanon".
Within a week the results of the investigation would prove to the country's Sunni Muslims that they had been wrong in blaming Syria, he alleges.
Mr Kassir thinks it was linked to the war in Iraq.
"We believe the Salafists [ Sunni Muslim fundamentalists] were angry with Hariri ever since he received [ the US-backed interim prime minister of Iraq] Iyad Allawi at his home in Beirut last year," he says.
Even if it were proved that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, this would not entirely clear Damascus. Iraqi Baathists have joined forces with Sunni fundamentalists; Syrian Baathists may have, too.
It was the second time this week that Iraq's shadow hung over Lebanon. On Tuesday the plea by French hostage Florence Aubenas for the intervention of the pro-Syrian French deputy Didier Julia led to speculation that Syria may be manipulating her captivity to punish Paris for insisting on a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.
Though Hizbullah belongs to the "Ain el-Tineh group" (named after the residence of the Shia Muslim speaker of parliament Nabih Berri) allied with Syria, Mr Kassir claims his group is "in the middle, between the loyalists and the opposition".
Mr Kassir accuses loyalists of "looking to Anjar" (Syrian intelligence headquarters), and the opposition of "looking to [ the US embassy at] Awkar".
But doesn't Hizbullah look to Tehran? A portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini hangs in the adjacent room. "Our relationship with Tehran is not with a regime," Mr Kassir says. "It is a spiritual relationship with our religious guide, Ayatollah Khamenei, just like the relationship of Catholics to the Pope."
Hizbullah has acted as an intermediary between the opposition and Damascus, Mr Kassir adds.
"But we have reached a stage where mediation is not possible, because the opposition are openly taking strength from the outside, from the French and the Americans."
The continued existence of Hizbullah as an armed resistance movement against Israel divides the anti-Syrian opposition.
Those seeking to preserve a semblance of national unity demand only the implementation of the 1989 Taif peace accords, leading to a Syrian withdrawal. More hardline Maronite Catholics insist the Syrians leave under UN Security Council resolution 1559, which demands the disarming of all militias.
"Don't think the US really cares about the wellbeing of the Lebanese," warns Dr Bassem Yamut, a US-trained Sunni Muslim neurologist and one of four MPs who broke with Rafik Hariri when he veered towards the opposition. When they visited his grave last week, the men were attacked by protesters on Martyrs Square.
"The main reason the US signed on to 1559 was to get rid of Hizbullah, as a favour to Israel," Dr Yamut says.
The Bush administration wants the EU to label Hizbullah a "terrorist organisation", but Europeans recognise it as a political party with a broad popular base.
"Hizbullah has a dual legacy that is both awful and good," explains Jihad Zein, editor of the opinion page at An Nahar newspaper.
"In the 1980s, in the darkest days of Beirut, they were a branch of Iranian intelligence, involved in the kidnapping of foreigners. But what our American friends don't understand is that in the 1990s they built a very respectable legacy as a resistance movement that drove the Israelis out of southern Lebanon."
Mr Zein thinks mainstream Shia would accept the disarming of Hizbullah once Syrian forces leave Lebanon. Hizbullah might even flourish without an armed militia. The rival Shia party Amal is more venal, its fate more directly tied to the Syrian presence.
For Syrian loyalists, the disarming of Hizbullah is heresy.
"[ Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon is one of the bloodiest leaders in the history of Israel," Dr Yamut says. "The presence of Hizbullah, with missiles that can reach northern Israel, has produced a balance of terror that protects us. If Hizbullah is disarmed, the Israelis can strike any time they want to."
Dr Yamut rejects the label of "Syrian loyalist". He asks why President Bush is so eager to see resolution 1559 implemented, when he told Mr Sharon in April 2004 that he does not need to respect UN resolutions.
"Syria is not the problem," he says. "The problem is what the Americans are doing to this region. If the opposition let the superpower in here, we'll have to pay the price. Lebanon will end up like Iraq."