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

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.

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

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 Antenne 2 crew was kidnapped on 8 March 1986 (de Clerck and Malsagne), not on 21 June.

Hanf: Elias Hrawi, the only candidate, won on the second ballot with 47 votes of the 53 deputies present, 5 abstaining, under Syrian protection; at the same sitting parliament gave itself four more years. Speaker Husseini had gone to Damascus on the night of 22 November. Traboulsi's chronology places the election on 22 November.

Hanf lists the parties left out of the Karami cabinet of 24 December 1990: Hezbollah, the National Liberals, Aoun's supporters and the Communists. With 30 ministers it was Lebanon's largest. Berri, Jumblatt, Geagea, Hobeika, Suleiman Frangieh, Abdallah el-Amin and Assad Hardan, seven militia chiefs, joined as ministers of state without portfolio. After the Lebanese Forces protested at its make-up, Geagea urged the Christian ministers to resign; only his two colleagues followed. It won confidence on 9 January 1991.