LOVED by some, loathed by others, no figure has dominated postwar Lebanon more than Rafik Hariri.

A self-made billionaire Sunni Muslim from the coastal city of Sidon in the south, Mr Hariri was the driving force behind an ambitious reconstruction programme to rebuild the war-shattered country. He used his contacts in the West and the Gulf to attract billions in investment capital which were spent on refurbishing the collapsed infrastructure and rehabilitating the centre of Beirut .

His supporters hailed him as the only man with the vision to rebuild the country. His detractors claimed that he was a crude opportunist who viewed Lebanon as an extension of his personal business empire.

He was born in Sidon in 1944 and moved to Saudi Arabia after graduating. He abandoned a job teaching maths and moved into the booming oil-funded construction business. He swiftly developed a reputation for bringing in projects on time and under-budget while winning influential friends among the Saudi Royal Family.

He later acquired a French firm, Oger, which became one of the largest construction businesses in Lebanon. He helped to mediate between factions in the civil war and used his construction companies to clear Beirut’s streets of rubble during lulls in the fighting.

In 1992, two years after the war ended, Mr Hariri was appointed Prime Minister for the first time. He would serve in the post for 10 of the next 13 years. At the time there were strong hopes of a breakthrough in the Middle East conflict and Mr Hariri gambled that with a regional peace secured by 1996, Lebanon would be in a position to settle its debts. But peace remained elusive, the negotiations bogged down and Lebanon sank deeper into debt.

Mr Hariri resigned as Prime Minister in 1998 when Emile Lahoud, a former Lebanese army commander, was elected President. During the next two years, the Government blamed Mr Hariri’s economic policies for the recession that sent debt spiralling (it stands today at $41 billion, or £21billion) and accused him of having profited personally from the reconstruction process. But Mr Hariri returned to the premiership in a landslide triumph in the 2000 parliamentary elections.

Yet he ran into a brick wall in his dealings with President Lahoud. It was no secret that the two men detested each other. In private, Mr Hariri had little compunction in speaking out against the President, blaming him for blocking his economic reform efforts and undermining his credibility with the international community. Indeed, the country stagnated between 2000 and 2004, caught in the vice of resentment between the powerful Prime Minister and the pro-Syrian President.

The final straw came last September when Syria gave its blessing to a three-year extension to Mr Lahoud’s presidency. It was a serious miscalculation by Syria and opened the door for the United Nations, Washington and Paris to begin pressing for an end to Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs. Ever the strategist, Mr Hariri resigned the following month and moved discreetly into the opposition camp.

Many Lebanese viewed his resignation in October as a tactical manoeuvre, expecting the redoubtable tycoon to return to the premiership. That aspiration, however, ended with yesterday’s bomb attack.

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