`Abdullah Al-Qubursi is a veteran leader of the SSNP; he died yesterday at age 98. I never knew him but know his son, `Atif. Israeli intelligence assassinated `Abdullah's son-in-law in Athens in 1983. I only knew about `Abdullah from people who knew him during the war years and before. One of the most decent and principled figures in Lebanese politics. He was not like Karim Muruwwah (formerly of the Lebanese communist party and currently a right-winger for Hariri family) who claimed in his memoirs that he was friends with everybody: in the right, center, and left. Qubursi wrote a great--and extremely modest--memoirs (only four volumes of which were published as he requested that the fifth volume be published after his death). After reading his memoirs, I came to really admire his personality and steadfastness. If he was still around, he would not have allowed the SSNP to turn into a mere tool of Syrian mukhabarat in Lebanon. Qubursi kept a low profile during the war years, and he had to flee Lebanon into Latin America until 1969 in the wake of the SSNP's coup in 1961. I never was a believer in SSNP's ideology, but I am always impressed with decent political figures in Lebanon. They are a rare breed. `Abdullah Al-Qubursi was one of them. This lawyer took on the cases of many poor people in Lebanon, when the celebrity lawyers would turn them away. My condolences to his family.