Lebanese leader condemns rocket attack, troops search presidential palace area

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman Friday condemned a rocket attack near the presidential palace on the previous night, as government troops were searching the area for the clues. Two rockets on Thursday night fell in the Mount town of Baabda where the palace is located, with one of them landing in Yarzeh district near the palace, and the other near the Lebanese Armed Forces Command and Staff College in al- Rayhaniyeh. Some security sources said the rockets were launched from the area of Al-Mwanse in Dhour Aramoun. In a statement issued by his media office, Suleiman said he was not detered by the attack. "The recurrence of rocket messages, no matter who sends them or towards which direction they are sent and no matter how dangerous they are, cannot change the nationalist principles and convictions that are being expressed with the honest and free word, emerging from the belief in the national interest to shield the country from what is happening around us and the region." "In order to guarantee Lebanon's stability and the unity among the Lebanese, we should return to the Baabda Declaration and maintain national consolidation amid these precarious circumstances," he said. The Baabda declaration calls for disassociating Lebanon from regional crises, especially the ongoing one in Syria. In a separate speech Thursday, Suleiman said the presence of non-state weapons would cripple the army's mission. He called for reconsidering the national defense strategy, "especially after the weapons of the resistance (hinting Hezbollah) crossed the Lebanese border." The president criticized the involvement of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group in Syria's conflict. As Syria's civil war drags on, the attack is one of a series that have heightened tensions in Lebanon, where there is a deep split between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad.