The leaders of Syria and Saudi Arabia, paying an unprecedented joint visit to Beirut today, will try to head off any conflict over a UN-backed tribunal which may indict Hizbullah members in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese statesman Rafik al-Hariri.
Mr Hariri's killing drove a wedge between Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Saudi King Abdullah. Now reconciled, their visit symbolises their determination to avert a crisis brewing between Hizbullah, backed by Syria and Iran, and factions aligned with prime minister Saad al-Hariri, an ally of Riyadh.
Saad al-Hariri, son of the slain Sunni Muslim leader, told Al Arabiya television yesterday that he believed the three-way summit between King Abdullah, Mr Assad and Lebanese president Michel Suleiman would provide "considerable stability" to Lebanon.
Mr Assad's visit will be his first to Beirut since Hariri's assassination, which provoked a domestic and international outcry that forced him to withdraw Syrian troops from Lebanon.
King Abdullah was last in the Lebanese capital for a 2002 Arab summit, when he was still Crown Prince, and he will be the first Saudi monarch to come to Lebanon for decades.
Mr Assad and King Abdullah are alarmed by the political ferment set off by Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah this month when he said Hariri had told him the tribunal would indict "rogue" members of the Shi'ite guerrilla group for his father's killing.
Mr Nasrallah insists the government, which in principle supports the tribunal should reject any such indictments - setting the scene for a paralysing government crisis and revived Sunni-Shia tensions, if not bloodshed as in 2008.
Lebanese media quoted Hezbollah's deputy chief Naim Kassem as saying a change of government might become an issue if its members were the target of indictments which he called "a project of strife, concocted by those who accuse us".
The Hague-based tribunal says talk of indictments is speculation and the prosecutor will file them when he is ready.
Mr Hariri, then leading a broad anti-Syrian coalition, at first accused Damascus of killing his father. Syria denies this. Since he became prime minister last year, Mr Hariri has dropped his anti-Syrian rhetoric and has visited Damascus several times to forge a rapprochement with Assad that matched a prior Syrian-Saudi reconciliation.
King Abdullah, who met Mr Assad in Damascus yesterday, was expected to urge the Syrian leader to use his influence with Nasrallah to reduce tension in Lebanon, which has enjoyed relative calm since a Qatari-mediated deal in 2008 ended a crisis that had culminated in Hizbullah briefly seizing Beirut.
After their talks in Damascus, the two rulers "affirmed that they care about backing concord in Lebanon and support all that contributes to its stability and unity", a statement said.
King Abdullah and Mr Assad were due to arrive in Beirut together later today to meet Mr Suleiman and a host of other Lebanese politicians.
Mr Suleiman's office only announced Assad's visit late yesterday, underlining uncertainty over whether the Syrian leader would really accompany the Saudi king to Beirut, where the airport road was lined with Syrian and Saudi flags.
Reuters