Its unprecedented powers spanned planning, funding and running reconstruction. It replaced the Planning Ministry in 1977; Picard calls it the economy's 'superministry'.

De Clerck and Malsagne have Iranian clerics and activists settling in the Bekaa, and then in Tyre, from 1980, before 500 to 2,000 Revolutionary Guards entered Lebanon in June 1982.

Officially no killer was named, but al-Lawzi's murder was widely blamed on his criticism of Syrian rule (Fisk; Picard). Fisk: he was seized near a Syrian army checkpoint heading for the airport.

On 29 January the Druze resumed attacking the army at Souk al-Gharb, after Shi'i militia sniping at the army and French troops from mid-January, Hanf's next escalation.

Picard dates the end of the talks with Israel to January 1985 and links it to the Lebanese Forces' revolt two months later.

In Hanf's account Berri offered the Christians a choice: a census to reset sectarian proportions, or an end to proportionality. Asked by Jumblatt why Syria dealt with Hobeika, Khaddam reportedly said everyone in Lebanon was a murderer.

Picard places the wave of killings of Communist and pro-Iraqi Baath leaders in January 1986.

Hanf says the army units around the camps were backed by a Syrian battalion.

The meetings produced no agreement (Hanf).

Historians describe the collapse of real wages behind such decrees: against 1974, the statutory minimum wage kept 13 percent of its buying power at the end of 1986 (Hanf, after Abou Rjaily and Labaki).

Not long before he was killed, Masse remarked that the foreign press passed over much of Lebanon's cultural, economic and political life; Picard quotes him.