"This sick man in Damascus has to be held accountable for his acts,"

December 14, 2005

The maverick Druze leader, Walid Jumblat, told a late-night television talk show Tuesday that he considered himself a protégé of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's secretary general. While Nasrallah might be a target of the Israelis, Jumblat said he is more at risk from the Syrians because "anyone who dares to say 'no' to the mafia-style Lebanese-Syrian regime is liquidated."

"This sick man in Damascus has to be held accountable for his acts," Jumblat said of Syrian President Bashar Assad. He noted that the morning of Tueni's assassination, newspapers in Lebanon and the region were full with remarks by the Syrian leader to Russian TV, threatening that the Middle East and the entire world would pay dearly for international sanctions against Damascus.(Naharnet)