The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that Syria was intending to fight the Salafist forces in northern Lebanon and that at a September 4-5 quadripartite summit in Damascus, with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Assad had received a green light to act as he saw fit in dealing with the rise in Salafism and fundamentalism in northern Lebanon.
According to the report, Assad presented to the summit participants intelligence information that some of these Salafist organizations were linked to Al-Qaeda and were planning to move into Europe afterwards.
Source: Al-Akhbar, Lebanon, September 29, 2008
