Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by the Mufti of Mt. Lebanon Sheik Muhammad Al-Jozo, which aired on New TV on October 22, 2006.

Sheik Muhammad Al-Jozo: I hope we all acknowledge that we belong to this homeland, and that this is the homeland of us all, and not of Bashar Al-Assad! Bashar Al-Assad is a murderer. It is Bashar Al-Assad who has brought us to where we are. For 30 years he has been setting the Lebanese one against the other - him and his father before him. A woman once asked me, when I appeared on Egyptian TV, what proof there was that Syria played a role in assassinating Al-Hariri. I said to her: It's simple. After the Al-Hariri assassination, Syria quickly withdrew [from Lebanon], after having insisted on staying in Lebanon." If Syria did not know it had committed this crime, it would never have left Lebanon.