Rice in surprise visit to Lebanon, calls for a single authority
Lebanon-USA, Politics, 7/23/2005

The US secretary of state Condaleezza Rice urged Lebanon to implement its international obligation "precisely" as prescribed by UN resolutions and to impose its authority on it "so as to have one authority there," a reference to the military presence of Hizbullah party in the south of the country.

She said in a joint press conference with the Lebanese prime minister Foaud Sanyoura, hours after her arrival in Beirut in an unexpected visit, that Lebanon is understood as a state which has international obligations and that there should be one political authority, in a clear remark to the Lebanese Hizbullah party, over which she said that the American position towards this organization has not changed.

Rice added that Washington supports the political reforms in Lebanon, and described the US administration as the best partner in the political process which she described as a Lebanese matter.

She expected that what she called the march of Lebanon towards liberation from foreign influence to be long because it suffered from foreign intervention for a long time, in remarks to Syria, to which Sanyoura said that relations with it will be brotherly in the interests of the two states, including the economic aspect.

However, the Lebanese prime minister avoided talking a lot about UN resolution 1559, and confined to recalling the old stand to that the Lebanese government will continue its consultations with the Lebanese sides concerning this issue.

Earlier, Sanyoura met with the Lebanese President Emil Lahoud at Baabda palace.

Worth noting, that the US repeats calls on Lebanon to implement UN resolutions, but does not do the same towards Israel, a country that has bombed and threatens Lebanon at will, and violates Lebanese sovereignty on an almost daily basis. US is often the only country at the UN Security Council blocking with its veto power efforts to make Israel abide by UN resolutions.

Hizbullah which kicked out Israel from Lebanon is seen as a deterrent force towards Israeli military and political hegemony towards Lebanon. While Rice said the US position towards Hizbullah has not changed, it is clear from various reports that the US seeks rapprochement with the US-designated terrorist organization, Hizbullah, because the organization has great popular Lebanese support.

Meantime, former US ambassador to Syria, Theodore Kattouf, on Friday expressed his conviction that pressure should not be placed on Lebanon in order to dismantle the weapons of the Lebanese Hizbullah party.

Kattouf said at the Nixon center in Washington that any Lebanese government that tries to carry out this mission will collapse. He added "I think that the weapons of Hizbullah should be dismantled but I do not think we should force Lebanon to make of this issue its first priority."

Previous Stories:
  Lebanon's forms new government; US refuses contact with Hizbullah minister   (7/20/2005)
  Washington secret talks with Hizbullah via mediator   (7/18/2005)
  Nasrallah deplores attempts to end resistance   (7/11/2005)

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