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BEYOND THE DROPZONE

Official Dialogue with Terrorists?

Posted by editor on 8 March 2009 at 4:01 pm UTC

Former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey D. Feltman and Daniel Shapiro, a National Security Council senior director, met Sunday in Beirut with Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani and Shia Sheikh Abdul Amir Qabalan: This after meeting with Syrian officials, Saturday.

A High-level meeting with any state-sponsor of terrorism is bad enough. But according to Naharnet – and I’ve yet to see it reported elsewhere – Qabalan not only “welcomed the U.S. administration’s steps to open dialogue with Syria,” but the senior Shia official called on the White House to “open communication channels with Hizballah and Hamas,” two of the world’s most infamous terrorist organizations.

Surely not.

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* Ballots and Bullets: The Tale of the Two Somalias
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Walid Phares, Ph.D.
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* The Roots of Washington's Failures in Dealing with "Rogue Regimes"
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W. Thomas Smith Jr.
* 'Beyond the DropZone'
Intelligence and Analysis



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