Jumblat Urges Sea of Supporters to 'Stand Fast' Against Syria's Tutelage

Walid Jumblat has counterbalanced the so-called pro-Syria 'demonstration of the one million' that was staged by Premier Omar Karami's government in Beirut last week with a massive show of muscle across the Druze hinterland on Sunday upon his return from talks with French President Chirac in Paris. "Each and everyone of you makes one million," Jumblat shouted from a loudspeaker to a sea of Druze, Christian and Muslim supporters who deluged his ancestral mansion in the Chouf Mountain town of Mukhtara, brandishing French and Lebanese flags alongside the banners of his Progressive Socialist Party. "Do not be afraid and let us all stand fast. We're not alone in the world anymore," said the standard-bearer of the Lebanon's Druze community who daringly rejects Syria's tutelage over Lebanon and charges the Syrian-backed extended regime of President Lahoud with turning Lebanon into a 'militarized police state.' Jumblat's speech, which grabbed page-one headlines of several Beirut dailies Monday, was seen by radio and TV analysts as a message that opposition forces in Lebanon would no longer be left by the international community as an easy prey of Syria's intelligence apparatus, or Moukhabarat. The Druze leader is obviously buoyed by Chirac's assertion during their meeting at the Elysee Friday that France insists on the "full and total" implementation of U.N. resolution 1559, which effectively seeks to break Syria's hold on Lebanon. It was the first time that French national flags were brandished in the Chouf region, which observed the 87th birthday of Kamal Jumblat, Walid's father who was assassinated near Mukhtara during the first round of the Lebanese civil war in 1977. Jumblat spoke from a makeshift podium with a Lebanese and a French flag fluttering overhead.