to recover its grip on the country.

In an interview with the Saudi TV Station "Orbit", Jumblat said" members of Saad Hariri's parliamentary bloc and his own ,Democratic Gathering, are targets of this 'evil plot'," citing Gibran Tueni's assassination last week as part of the campaign.

"They killed Gibran Tueni and there are members of the Democratic Gathering and the Beirut Decision blocs on the list," said Jumblatt. "They believe that once these people are liquidated, the scene in parliament would change."

"This portrays the Lebanese as an incapable nation, facilitating the return of the Syrian occupation," he remarked. "This is the evil plot."

Most Lebanese newspapers that were published today carried extensive excerpts of his remarks.

Jumblatt said Syria's Military Intelligence Chief Gen. Assef Shawkat has threatened Lebanese Army Commander General Michel Suleiman after the latter abruptly closed this weekend the so-called "military border crossing", which has been recently used for smuggling weapons and intelligence personnel into Lebanon from Syria.

Asked how he learned of the threat, Jumblatt noted that he has dealt with intelligence networks in Lebanon for over 30 years.

The PSP leader suggested that Chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis was "terrorized" out of his job, even though the German prosecutor had insisted he quit Dec. 15 to return to his old post in Berlin.( In an interview with Al Sharq Al Awsat newspaper last Friday, Mehlis did confirm that he has received many threats)

"What is happening is far more dangerous than meets the eye," Jumblatt said. "The Syrian intelligence is invading Lebanon."

Lebanon's sole means of defense is "the honest word," he said. They have the "booby trapped cars." In reference to the murder of Journalists Samir Kassir and Gibran Tueni and the attempted murder of May Chidiac.

Jumblatt asked how come Syrian President Bashar Assad never posed for a moment of silence to commemorate former Lebanon's PM Hariri in speeches that showered the Lebanese with "inflammatory rhetoric."

He ridiculed Syrian denial of involvement in Hariri's murder, noting that Syria's "iron fist" in Lebanon "could not possibly miss 1,000 kilograms of explosives floating in a truck, waiting to blow up Hariri's car, and supported by the most sophisticated electronic jamming equipment."

One of the reasons why Hariri was killed, said Jumblatt, was the fact he had uncovered the fraud at the Al-Madina Bank, where $1 billion had been siphoned away to personal accounts of "high-ranking" Syrian officials.

When the Syrians withdrew in April, he said, they left behind "extensive and well-organized networks with lots of money available to them."

The fact that Gibran Tueni was executed about 9 hours after his return from Paris proved that the culprits were serious professionals, he added.

Jumblatt called on Hezbollah to use its elaborate security apparatus to help protect Lebanese on the Syrian hit list.

Syria's hit list
It was widely reported during this weekend that Anti-Syrian Lebanese figures including Walid Jumblatt and Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh are among six men on a new "hit-list".

Al-Balad newspaper, quoting government and parliamentary sources, on Thursday named the other alleged targets "on the hit-list of people to be killed" as deputies Wael Abu Faour, Samir Franjieh, Elias Atallah and Farid Makari.

The list was published a day after prominent anti-Syrian MP and Journalist Gibran Tueni was buried in a politically and emotionally charged funeral following his assassination in a bomb blast which many blamed on Syria.

The six people named on Thursday all belong to the anti-Syrian majority in the new Lebanese parliament which swept the polls in June, in the first election in Lebanon after Syria withdrew from the country, ending nearly 30 years of occupation.

"It is almost the same list that surfaced before Tueni was assassinated and which also included his name," said Atallah, one of the MPs on the list. "We will be more careful and limit our movements but this will not change our policies."

Anti-Syrian former Lebanese president Amin Gemayel told on Tuesday that Tueni had told him he had been informed by the Lebanese authorities that UN top investigator Detlev Mehlis had learned of direct threats against Tueni"... "Tueni was told he was on top of the list".

Tueni was killed on Monday in a massive car bombing a day after he returned from a France where he was in self exile for fear of an attempt for his life in the wake of a spate of attacks on critics of Syria.

Angry mourners at Tueni's funeral blamed Syria for his death and several MPs used the occasion to call for a regime change in Damascus, accusing it of being responsible for a series of political assassinations in Lebanon.

In his comment about the murder of Tueni, Lebanese Forces Executive Committee chief Samir Geagea said "Tueini did not die for nothing; it's time to stop being silent and to say enough,". He added "the destruction of national symbols proved Lebanon was in "a state of war." He further added "What we are witnessing is a way to hamper the establishment of a strong state.

Lebanon's politicians, religious leaders and civil society members continued to speak out against the assassination of Tueni, demanding that the perpetrators of the attack be brought to justice to restore Lebanon's security and stability.

Syria has denied any responsibility in Tueni's murder or the February assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, which triggered international condemnation. But Detlev Mehlis in his interview with Al Sharq Al Alawsat newspaper squarely blamed Syria fort he assassination of Hariri.

Hamadeh, who was himself wounded in a car bombing in October 2004 and is Tueni's uncle, told parliament Wednesday that the "dictatorial regime (in Syria) must be stopped."

Jumblatt has also called for "regime change" in Damascus.
French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour meanwhile quoted Mehlis as saying that tension between Hariri and Syria was "most probably" one of the motives behind his killing.

"As we've said in our report, one of the motives for the assassination was most probably the tension between Syria and ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri," the German prosecutor was quoted as saying.

"It was the key (point) of our report," he said in the interview at UN headquarters where on Tuesday he had released his second report on the murder that implicates Syrian and Lebanese security officials.

Sources: Ya Libnan, Naharnet, Al Mustaqbal, , Orbit TV, Al Sharq Al Alawsat