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Report: STL Defense Office Head Wants to ‘Crush’ Bellemare

Head of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Defense office Francois Roux is seeking the help of a prominent lawyer in the new majority to acquire substantial material that could help him in his task, As Safir newspaper reported on Monday.

“I want to crush (Prosecutor) Daniel Bellemare, just like the former World Bank manager did with New York’s prosecutor Cyrus Vance, after accusing him with a sex scandal,” Roux said, according to As Safir.

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Guy Says Lebanon Should Reveal Truth about Issues Bigger than STL

British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Mary Guy said that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is a small point in a list of requirements that the Lebanese officials should admit and unveil to the international community.

“There is a list of demands (the Lebanese officials) should admit and unveil, which are bigger than the STL and goes back to the Lebanese civil war era,” Guy told As Safir in an interview that will be published on Tuesday.

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Feltman Denies he Intends to Visit Beirut

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman denied media reports that he was intending to visit Beirut soon to pressure Lebanese authorities into complying with international resolutions.

Media reports had said that Feltman’s visit was aimed at pushing the Lebanese government towards committing itself to the resolutions on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and cooperate with the court.

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Bassil Hits Back at Israel, Asks It to Sign U.N. Law of Sea Treaty

In response to the Israeli cabinet’s approval on Sunday of a map of the Jewish state's proposed maritime borders with Lebanon, which conflicts significantly with those proposed by Lebanon in its own submission to the U.N., Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil said Lebanon had demarcated its maritime borders according to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, calling on Israel to “sign this convention before speaking about international laws.”

Commenting on the Israeli cabinet’s announcement that it will soon present the map of its maritime economic zone located between Lebanon and Cyprus for a U.N. opinion, Bassil told Agence France Presse: “We don’t have a presupposition. Let’s see what will Israel send to the U.N. Should it respect international law, there will be no problem.”

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Raad: The More You Use Indictment, The More We'll Push for Suing False Witnesses

MP Mohammed Raad, head of Hizbullah’s Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc, on Sunday noted that the indictment and the arrest warrants recently released by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon against four Hizbullah members in the assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri were “aimed at ensnaring the Resistance by holding it responsible for a crime that was committed in Lebanon and the Resistance was the first to be negatively affected by its impact.”

“Those who had endured your global war in 2006 will be easily able to endure your latest lie – the indictment. And the same as your goals had failed in the 2006 war, the repercussions of this lie will fail and will fire back at you and at everyone who has been involved with you in plotting conspiracies and fabricating rumors,” Raad added.

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STL Confirms Interpol Arrest Warrants

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is investigating the 2005 murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, said on Sunday that Interpol had circulated arrest warrants for the four suspects in the bombing.

"I can confirm that the tribunal has requested Interpol to notify all states of the arrest warrants against the accused in the 14th February 2005 attack," the court's spokesman in The Hague, Martin Youssef, told Agence France Presse.

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Israel to Seek U.N. Opinion on Maritime Border Spat

Israel is to seek a U.N. opinion on its maritime borders with Lebanon in the Mediterranean, where lucrative offshore gas fields have been found, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday.

"We will soon be presenting the United Nations headquarters in New York with our position on our maritime borders," Lieberman told Israeli public radio.

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Gemayel: Given the Division, I Don’t See Any Point in Holding National Dialogue

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel stated that on the official scene, Lebanon will ignore the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and its indictment, while its people will hang on to it “seeing as it is the only way to uncover the killers of our martyrs.”

He told the Saudi Okaz newspaper in remarks published on Sunday: “The Lebanese government should take an honest position on the tribunal and openly commit to it.”

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Hizbullah Refused to Meet Head of STL Defense Office

Hizbullah rejected a suggestion to hold a meeting with the head of the Defense Office of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Francois Roux aimed at studying the possibility of the confronting the indictment, revealed widely informed sources to the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday.

They explained that the meeting would have explained to the party leadership the seriousness of the Defense’s work, as well as the possibility of overturning the accusations against Hizbullah members indicted in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

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Interpol Issues Alerts in Hariri Assassination

Interpol issued its highest-level international alerts against four Hizbullah men indicted in the 2005 slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese security official said Saturday.

The Interpol red notices were issued at the request of the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, said the official, who requested anonymity in line with official regulations.

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