"I tell my employees I don't expect street violence, but I have the impression they don't believe me.''

"...politicians and a parade of diplomats have voiced concern in recent days that indictments to be issued soon by a U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will usher in a new era of political instability, or even bloodshed, should the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah be fingered in the killing.

"People are more worried than ever,'' said one high-ranking government official who declined to be identified by name. "I tell my employees I don't expect street violence, but I have the impression they don't believe me.''...

The stakes are also high for the United States, which has watched its pro-Western allies - swept to power five years ago after Hariri's assassination by a car bomb - wither while Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, has grown in strength.The last thing the United States wants now is a new Sunni-Shiite battle front as it struggles to contain similar sectarian tensions in Iraq, observers here say. Israel also is watching events anxiously, concerned that any internal Lebanese squabbles could spill southward and spark a renewed confrontation with Hezbollah, with which the Israeli military waged a deadly war to an inconclusive end in 2006.

 

'Dealing with the 'time-bomb' in Abu Dhabi...'

Recent reaction to reports that Hezbollah members could be named in Hariri's killing has demonstrated just how much power the organization has over the country's affairs - and its psyche.in a blustery televised speech Thursday night, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said he won't allow any members of his group to be arrested. "Any hand that will touch any of them will be cut off,'' Nasrallah told a cheering crowd in Beirut's southern suburbs, Hezbollah's stronghold....

Most recently, on Wednesday, Hezbollah tried and failed to force the cabinet to vote to send people who allegedly gave false testimony to investigators to be tried in Lebanon's top court. Hezbollah hopes such a move will delay the release of the indictments. Hariri and his allies blocked the vote temporarily, leaving the cabinet in political deadlock.Walid Jumblatt, the former Druze warlord and key Lebanese political figure, regrets originally championing the tribunal. "We have created a time bomb, a deadly time bomb,'' Jumblatt said. ..."