BEIRUT- Reuters
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon on Friday to show U.S. support for the new government, the first to be formed since Syrian forces withdrew in April. On arrival, Rice was immediately driven under tight security to the house of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, where she met his son Saad al-Hariri, parliament’s majority coalition leader.
She was later to visit the grave of Hariri, assassinated in Beirut in February. She will then hold talks with the country’s top officials, including pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. “This will be an opportunity first of all to congratulate the Lebanese people on their desire for democracy and the fact that they keep pressing forward, and have formed a government,” Rice told reporters aboard her plane en route from Israel.
“I look forward to meeting some of the members of the government to see how the international community and the United States in particular can be supportive.” Rice, the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Lebanon since her predecessor Colin Powell in May 2003, will meet Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, three days after he formed a new cabinet following last month’s parliamentary elections.
A senior State Department official who asked not to be identified said the prime minister represented the new Lebanon and Lahoud the old.
She is also expected to discuss a United Nations resolution calling for the disarming of anti-Israeli Hizbollah guerrillas and political and economic reform after Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April. Siniora’s government included one member of Hizbollah, listed by Washington as a terrorist organization, who was named as energy minister. The U.S. official said Rice had waited to see how much of the government included Hizbollah before deciding to this trip.
He noted the energy minister was not key to bilateral relations and added “we don’t expect to be having any interaction with the Hizbollah minister.” One idea Rice would propose in her meeting is to hold an international conference to share ideas about how to spur Lebanon‘s economy. The top diplomat flew under secrecy due to security fears in a country where there had been politically motivated assassinations this year. Journalists traveling with Rice were banned from reporting on her visit until she arrived.
Security was tight in Beirut, scene of repeated bomb attacks in recent months. Lebanese troops and police were patrolling several roads Rice was expected to travel along. Rice, on her third visit to the Middle East this year, was in the region to press Israel and the Palestinians to coordinate a mid-August Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza strip, which Washington hopes will help revive stalled peace moves. The trip followed a surge of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed and mass protests by Jewish rightists opposed to Sharon‘s Gaza plan, developments that have aggravated tensions and complicated the withdrawal.
By Saul Hudson
The Assyrian Democratic Organization
