Gen Michel Aoun, the former Lebanese army commander, dreams of returning home in triumph. He speaks to Lara Marlowe
You have to give Gen Michel Aoun credit for being consistent. When he initiated his "war of liberation" against Syrian forces in Lebanon 16 years ago, he had one objective: the Syrians' departure from Lebanon. The message has not changed one iota.
In the intervening years, the tide of Middle East history nearly drowned the Maronite Catholic artillery officer who compared himself to Christ and Charles de Gaulle. For Gen Aoun took weapons and money from Saddam Hussein to fight the Syrians.
"Iraq helped me without conditions," he said at a press conference yesterday. "What was wrong with Iraq in 1989? Other Arab regimes were the same."
After losing his war with Damascus, Aoun holed up in the ruins of the presidential palace. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, Washington gave Damascus the green light to bomb him. The general fled, in his pyjamas, to the French ambassador's residence.
The French spirited him out, to a villa on the Côte d'Azur, and more recently an apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris.
Because Syria is now on Washington's blacklist, Aoun has washed up again on history's tide. He takes credit for the US Congress' Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, and rejoices in UN Security Council Resolution 1559.
Co-sponsored by France and the US, it says Syria must leave Lebanon.
He insists he will return to Lebanon before legislative elections due this spring, despite threats to arrest him at the airport.
"There has been permanent aggression against me for 15 years," he says. "When I return to Lebanon, I am counting on the entire population. Don't forget, I was commander-in-chief of the Lebanese armed forces. Sixty-six per cent of the army were Muslim, and I was highly regarded by them. . ."
Today, Aoun wears a suit and tie instead of camouflage, but the persecution complex and the claim to speak for all Lebanese - not just Christians - are the same. Muslim Lebanese army officers I interviewed in 1989 called Aoun a madman and a coward.
But anything is possible in Lebanese politics. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader who exchanged artillery barrages with Aoun, is about to visit him in Paris. They are negotiating joint lists in the upcoming elections, and reliable sources say the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, may join their alliance. Hariri was the architect of the Taif Peace Accords - still cursed by Aoun - which brought an end to the Lebanese civil war.
The only character missing is Samir Geagea, the Phalangist militia leader who was Aoun's ally against the Syrians, then his enemy in a war for control of the Christian enclave. Amnesty International recently demanded Geagea's liberation. His return to Lebanon "will help get Geagea out", Aoun promised yesterday. "And it will help others into prison," he added laughing, like the vengeful general who used to ban "disrespectful" journalists from his enclave.
Of Gen Aoun's six-month "war of liberation", I remember women and children and old people with shrapnel wounds, bodies in hospital morgues. Many sympathised with the objective of forcing the Syrians out, but shelling Lebanese "collaborators" in areas under Syrian control was an extreme and futile way to attempt it.
No, Gen Aoun said yesterday, he felt no remorse for the 3,500 civilians killed in the bombardment he started. "But I think about the victims," he said. "They are the engine that keeps my struggle going, to give a meaning to those martyrs.
"Remorse, no, because all's fair in love and war. There is no war without losses. The cause for which these martyrs fell was a just war."
When Aoun began waffling about soldiers honouring their oath to the Lebanese flag, I interrupted: the 3,500 dead were civilians. "Is there such a thing as war without collateral damage?" he asked. "No country in the world can guarantee the safety of civilians. Look at Iraq today. . . 200,000 people died in Lebanon, of whom 3,500 when I was in power. But who killed the others?"