Holed Up in a Beirut Hotel In Quest to Pick a President

BEIRUT -- More than 40 members of Lebanon's parliament have spent the past month in the gilded luxury of a five-star hotel in Beirut, trying to avoid assassination so they can elect the country's next president.

Access to their wing of the Intercontinental Phoenicia is sharply restricted, police keep watch from nearby rooftops, and the politicians are told to stay away from the hotel's windows lest they draw a sniper's bullet. The plush upholstery and buttery pastries do little to soothe the isolated legislators.

"I would rather, a million times over, enjoy the comfort of my house and family than be locked in a jail-like hotel," said Wael Abou Faour, a newly married member of parliament who is anticipating the birth of his first child, a daughter, due in February.

Abou Faour and others want to escape the fate of Antoine Ghanem, a member of parliament killed in a car bombing Sept. 19, a day after returning to Lebanon from refuge abroad. He was the fourth member of the present parliament to be assassinated since the killing of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005. All five politicians opposed what they saw as Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs, as have the targets of other recent acts of political violence.

Lebanon is approaching a new milestone in its relationship with its powerful neighbor, whose leaders deny any role in the violence. On Nov. 24, the term of President Emile Lahoud, a pro-Syrian former army commander, will expire. It falls to parliament to elect his successor.

Several parliamentary sessions to begin choosing a new leader have been postponed, and politicians are working behind the scenes to agree on a consensus candidate. A fourth session is scheduled for Wednesday.

Rafiq Khoury, editor of the independent daily al-Anwar, said that the Lebanese political situation is bleak and that consensus seems unlikely, but not impossible.

Anti-Syrian leaders and their backers in the United States and Europe want a president who will, among other priorities, support U.N. efforts to hold accountable those responsible for Hariri's death and to disarm the politically powerful Hezbollah movement. On the other side, Hezbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran are determined to oppose what they argue is foreign meddling.

"There isn't an acrobat capable of juggling all these contradictions," Khoury said.

As the tension rises, many of the anti-Syrian lawmakers, whose movement is called March 14 after a massive rally following Hariri's death, have chosen the safety promised by the Phoenicia, where the full rate for the suites they occupy is $575 a night. The movement is paying the legislators' bills, said Ammar Houry, a March 14 member of parliament who is staying at the hotel.

Commentators supportive of the March 14 coalition call the Phoenicia the "Freedom Hotel," and say it evokes the Rashaya fortress in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where the country's leaders were detained by French colonial authorities during the 1943 rebellion that led to independence.

Others say the security issue is being used to draw media attention and public sympathy. Wi'am Wahhab, a pro-Syrian former cabinet minister, criticized the legislators' "cowardly measure," saying that "nations can only be built by real men and certainly not by mice that hide underground."

Abou Faour and the other lawmakers hunkered down in the hotel say they want to prevent their opponents from using assassination to deny March 14 its slim majority in parliament. The lawmakers say they spend their days in meetings and try as much as possible to attend to their constituents.

A lobby has been turned into a dining and meeting area, where refreshments are served, but security comes at a personal cost. Alaa Dine Terro, another lawmaker living at the hotel, had to wait for days before he could meet his newborn son, who was brought to the hotel.

The legislators' movement outside is limited to emergencies. Mostafa Alloush, a member of parliament who is a physician, left one day this month to perform an operation at a hospital in the north of Lebanon. He and his bodyguard went in a vehicle without an official license plate and turned off their cellphones so Alloush's location could not be pinpointed.

Among the parliament members at the hotel are contractors, university professors and businessmen who have put their work and personal lives on hold. They say that once a president is chosen, the security measures may abate, but the threat will never go away.

"The Syrians have issued a death penalty" against the March 14 movement, Abou Faour said. "If they don't kill us now for political reasons, they will later for revenge."