Walid Jumblatt, the former minister for the displaced visited Damascus Tuesday for a four-hour meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad. During his eight years term of office, Mr. Jumblatt supervised the spending of nearly one billion US dollars budgeted to fund the return of the displaced to their homes. In view of the meager result, there is a general consensus that the most of the funds earmarked to help the hundreds of thousands of the displaced found their way to the private pockets of the politically non-displaced.
Mr. Jumblatt also met with Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam in the Syrian capital, after conferring earlier with General Ghazi Kenaan, the head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon based in Anjar, the Bikaa.
Significantly, the meeting with the Syrian leader followed a television interview on Monday during which Jumblatt took President Lahoud to task for allegedly seeking to "monopolize" ties with Damascus.
Under the Lebanese constitution, relations with foreign heads of state fall within the prerogatives of the president.
Mr. Jumblatt specifically criticized a remark by the president during his swearing in ceremony when he suggested that relations with Syria should not be conducted through individual politicians serving their own private interests.
"The president will have to excuse me, but relations with Syria are not a monopoly on his part," Mr. Jumblatt stated during the interview. During the vote of confidence debate for the government of Prime Minister Salim Hoss, Mr. Jumblatt had taken exceptions to Finance Minister George Corm.
In Monday's interview, Mr. Jumblatt renewed his criticism of the government and its campaign to deny the "achievements" of the previous cabinet under former Premier Rafik Hariri, whom he defended very strongly.