US Ally Hariri's role

From the Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar this morning, following the clashes between the Lebanese army and a group called Islamic Fatah in northern Lebanon, around the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared yesterday:

[Army commander Michel Suleiman] informed the security cabinet headed by president Fouad Siniora that the military does not recommend that the politicians take a decision to expand the scope of the confrontations, or to think of entering the camps, which is something that enjoyed the cover of many political groups including the Future movement, whose leader Saad Hariri persisted that in exchange for that [not entering the camps and so on], that there should be taken all necessary steps to see to the dismantelment of this group.

As video of the events in the last 24 hours showed the scope of the security breakdowns, the attempts of the March 14 group (the governing coalition) to exploit these events politically in connection with the discussion of the international tribunal [i.e., spinning the events as a Syrian plot against the tribunal] didn't have a very long life, once it became clear that the majority of the armed individuals fighting the army outside the camp were people of the north [meaning natives of north Lebanon] and that these individuals were members of extreme Islamist groups, and that among them were people from circles close to the Future movement [of Saad Hariri].

Information and comments are fragmentary, but it is worth noting that there while most Western accounts tend to echo the "Syrian plot" idea, the meaning of the events of Sunday could be the opposite. In the same vein, Robert Fisk includes in his account of the events of yesterday this:

This is the same Saad Hariri whom at least one American reporter - I refer to Seymour Hersh - suggested was indirectly helping to funnel Saudi money to these same gunmen in a recent article in The New Yorker. The Shia Muslim Hizbollah are supposed to be the bad guys in this scenario, not a Sunni group.

And maybe it wouldn't be out of place to refer back to remarks by Lebanese lawyer Issam Naaman who said recent congressional delegations to Lebanon included remarks to the effect that the US is working with extremists to carry out destabilizing acts in Lebanon that will be blamed on AlQaeda.