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| Powell told that Hezbollah is legitimate resistance |
BEIRUT,
April 15 (News Agencies) - Lebanese officials on Monday, April 15,
frostily rejected a warning from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
that "aggressive actions" from southern Lebanon against Israel
could lead to wider Middle East conflict, news agencies reported.
Lebanese
President Emile Lahoud told Powell that Hezbollah attacks on Israeli
troops in a disputed border area were not terrorist acts but legitimate
resistance against occupation, Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmud Hammud
said.
Lahoud
also told Powell that a recent escalation in such attacks was the fault
of recent Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territories
that have enraged the Arab world, according to Hammud, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"President
Lahoud stressed that developments in the region cannot be isolated from
the Lebanese scene, mainly given Israel's escalation of its aggression
on the Palestinians on Palestinian territories," Hammud said.
In
comments that summarized Lahoud's talks with Powell, Hammud added that
Israel had not complied with U.N. resolutions by withdrawing its troops
from Arab land.
"Israel
bears the complete responsibility for the ongoing deterioration,"
he said. "The (Lebanese) resistance and the intifada became the
only means to force Israel to implement these resolutions."
Lahoud
called on Washington "to look at the situation with objectivity and
realism, and not to be affected by Israeli pressures and positions that
present the Lebanese resistance in Shebaa Farms as terrorist acts,"
Hammud said.
Hezbollah
are fighting Israeli troops holding the disputed Shebaa Farms area
seized from Syria in 1967 and now claimed by Beirut with Damascus'
consent.
The
U.S. State Department has designated Hezbollah a "foreign terrorist
organization" and subjected the group's members to financial and
travel sanctions.
Since
Israel stepped up its military operations with military incursions into
the West Bank last month, the Hezbollah attacks have increased.
Despite
Hammud's sharp words, Powell, who was taking a one-day break from his
efforts to quell the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, forged ahead with his
message of restraint.
"The
United States remains concerned about continuing violence across the
Blue Line," he said, referring to the U.N. demarcation drawn to
mark the border after Israel's troop pullout from southern Lebanon in
May 2000.
"There
is a very real danger of the situation along the border widening the
conflict throughout the region," said Powell, who got a first-hand
look at the area in question from the Israeli side when he met with
commanders of Israel's northern command in Safed on Friday.
Powell
later brought the same point to Damascus where he met with Syrian
President Bashar Al-Assad and Foreign Minister Faruq Al-Shara.
He
was to return to Jerusalem on Monday evening to resume his
Israeli-Palestinian peace mission which has thus failed to produce a
truce or a set date for the withdrawal of Israel's troops from the West
Bank.
Official
Damascus Radio, meanwhile, said a proposal from Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon to hold an international conference on the Middle East was
nothing more than an exercise in "deception".
Powell
said he wanted to "to brief them on my efforts to bring an end to
the violence ... and hear from my Syrian colleagues their
assessment."
Syria
has not commented on the recent upsurge in Hezbollah attacks, but
political sources here stressed that Damascus views such attacks as
aimed at "liberating land and defending against Israeli
aggression."
On
a visit to northern Israel on Friday, Powell said, "I call upon
nations who have influence over Hezbollah, especially Syria, to do
everything in their power to restrain Hezbollah and to stop this kind of
activity before it widens the conflict in the region."
