Steel Belt of Tanks Rings Beirut on Eve of Mehlis Report on Hariri's Assassins

A steel belt of tanks and armored personnel carriers ringed Beirut to cope with potentially destabilizing fallout from the release of the Detlev Mehlis report on ex-Premier Hariri's assassination Thursday. Army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman vowed to stamp out 'without hesitation' any disorders anywhere in the country. President Lahoud and Gen. Suleiman said army troops and various security services have been mobilized and put on maximum alert to crush any attempt at disorders from the scheduled presentation of the Mehlis report to U.N. chief Kofi Annan at the U.N. secretariat in New York Thursday. Mehlis and his 100-strong commission of investigators and forensic experts spent ten weeks probing Hariri's murder, including interrogation sessions of witnesses and suspects in Lebanon, Syria, Switzerland and France. He will hand over the report on the outcome to Annan late Thursday. The report is expected to be made public on Friday. "There is no reason for the state of anxiety and fear in which the Lebanese are living on the eve of the Mehlis verdict," President Lahoud said. "The state's political, security and financial institutions are on guard to protect national peace and the components of national reconciliation and thwart any attempt aimed at stirring up internal troubles." Tanks sat on all entrances to the Lebanese capital as well as surrounding hilltops while troops and red bereted riot policemen set up joint checkpoints guarded by APCs at all key intersections, searching cars and frisking occupants for arms around-the-clock. The Defense Ministry suspended all gun licenses until further notice. Sentries in full battle gear stood guard 10 meters apart on every sidewalk at main residential districts of Ashrafiyeh, Mar Elias, Verdun, Hamra and the downtown thoroughfare and guards around foreign embassies and U.N. centers were more than redoubled. Ambulances and fire engines are on standby and the U.N. House in Downtown Beirut has been fortified with concrete barricades from ground to ceiling. "The army's priority is to dispel public fears from a fallout that would not be allowed to happen as a result of the U.N. probe of Premier Hariri's assassination," Gen. Suleiman said in an address to the nation after making an inspection tour of military positions in Beirut and the suburban townships of Damour and Saadiat Wednesday. The Lebanese are on edge. Many people expect the Mehlis report to implicate the Assad regime, or at least its senior intelligence commanders who served in Lebanon when Hariri was murdered in a one-ton bomb blast in Beirut Feb. 14. The assassination triggered a massive public uprising dubbed as the Cedars Revolt, which forced a humiliated Syria to withdraw its army and end 29 years of ruthless tutelage over Lebanon earlier in the year. People fear the remnants of Syrian secret service cells with the help of political factions still loyal to the Assad regime would reignite the terror campaign of bombings and assassinations that rocked Lebanon over the past 8 months, if Syria is accused of engineering Hariri's murder.