A Lebanese presidential statement on Israeli strikes against Syrian positions

News reports said on Monday that the Lebanese President Emil Lahoud warned against a comprehensive confrontation in the region. This was expressed following a telephone call, the Lebanese President made on Monday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after the Israeli raid at a Syrian position in Lebanon.

A statement by the Lebanese presidency said that President Lahoud considered the Israeli air raids inside the Lebanese territories as "a grave development embodied by the bloody policy pursued by the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon since he had assumed power in Israel," stressing that this policy will push towards comprehensive confrontation.

Lahoud held Israel responsible for the grave results to be inflected as a result of this new aggression.

The statement explained that Lahoud talked on the telephone with President al-Assad and offered him condolences on the Syrian victims who were killed in the Israeli raid.