US hands Lebanon draft truce proposal – two political sources

BEIRUT: The funeral for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed last year in an Israeli strike, will be held on Feb. 23, said the Iran-backed group’s current chief Naim Qassem on Sunday.
“After security conditions prevented holding a funeral” during two months of all-out war between the group and Israel that ended on Nov. 27, Hezbollah has decided to hold “on February 23 a grand... public funeral” for Nasrallah, Qassem said in a televised speech.

Nasrallah, who was born in 1960, would be laid to rest nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli air attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Nasrallah was killed on Sept. 27 and had been buried discretely and temporarily according to religious decree, as Hezbollah officials had deemed the security situation too unsafe for officials and religious leaders to appear publicly to honor him.

He will be buried on the outskirts of Beirut “in a plot of land we chose between the old and new airport roads,” Qassem said.

Hezbollah's chief also confirmed for the first time that leading official Hashem Safieddine had been chosen to succeed Nasrallah before he, too, was killed in an Israeli raid in October.

The group will hold Safieddine’s funeral on the same day, Feb. 23, and he will be buried in his hometown of Deir Qanun in southern Lebanon.

Safieddine will be buried “as Secretary-General” or leader of Hezbollah, because “we had... elected His Eminence Sayyed Hashem as Secretary-General... but he was martyred on October 3, a day or two before the announcement,” Qassem said.

LONDON: Vice-Admiral Abdullah Khamis Al-Raisi, the Omani Armed Forces’ chief of staff, received French Chief of Defence General Thierry Burkhard in his office at Al-Murta’a'a Garrison on Sunday.

During the meeting, both sides exchanged views and reviewed various military matters of mutual interest, reported the Oman News Agency.

Burkhard and his delegation were also received by Omani Deputy Prime Minister for Defense Affairs Sayyid Shihab bin Tarik Al-Said.

The meeting was attended by Nabil Hajlaoui, the French ambassador to Muscat, and the French military attache.