PARIS: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday warned France that its efforts to resolve the crisis in Lebanon would be in vain without immediately tackling the issue of Iran-backed Hezbollah’s weaponry.
President Emmanuel Macron has spearheaded international efforts to set Lebanon on a new course after decades of corrupt rule led to its deepest crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
But unlike Washington, which deems the heavily armed and politically powerful movement a terrorist group, Paris says its elected arm has a legitimate political role.
The United States last week expanded its sanctions related to Lebanon by blacklisting two former government ministers it accused of enabling Hezbollah. That has raised questions as to how much the US and France are coordinating as Lebanon’s factional rivalries struggle to form a new government.
“The United States has assumed its responsibility and we will stop Iran buying Chinese tanks and Russian air defense systems and then selling weapons to Hezbollah (and) torpedoing President Macron’s efforts in Lebanon,” Pompeo told France Inter radio.
“You can’t allow Iran to have more money, power and arms and at same time try to disconnect Hezbollah from the disasters it provoked in Lebanon.”
Hezbollah, which has a parliamentary majority, and its Shi’ite ally Amal held ministerial posts in the last government, including the health and finance ministries.
Macron said on Sept. 1, during a visit a month after a devastating Beirut port blast, that Lebanese politicians agreed to form a cabinet by Sept. 15, an ambitious timeline given it usually takes months.
French officials have said the priority is to put in place a government that could implement reforms quickly, but the matter of Hezbollah’s weapons was not an immediate issue.
French daily newspaper Le Figaro reported in August that Macron had met Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, and told him that the group should disassociate itself from Iran and remove its forces from neghbouring Syria.
The French presidency did not deny the meeting, which would be a first between a French leader and a member of the group.
“It’s a doubled-edged sword for Macron. Hezbollah is part of the very governance system that needs changing and I’m not sure you can deal with political Hezbollah without handling armed Hezbollah,” said a French diplomatic source.
Pompeo says Hezbollah weapons risk torpedoing French efforts in Lebanon
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Pompeo says Hezbollah weapons risk torpedoing French efforts in Lebanon
- President Emmanuel Macron has spearheaded international efforts to set Lebanon on a new course
- Paris says Hezbollah’s elected arm has a legitimate political role
Syria Kurds chief says ‘all efforts’ being made to salvage deal with Damascus
- Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal
- The two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism
DAMASCUS: Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said Thursday that “all efforts” were being made to prevent the collapse of talks on an agreement with Damascus to integrate his forces into the central government.
The remarks came days after Aleppo saw deadly clashes between the two sides before their respective leaders ordered a ceasefire.
In March, Abdi signed a deal with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to merge the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration into the government by year’s end, but differences have held up its implementation.
Abdi said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army, remained committed to the deal, adding in a statement that the two sides were working toward “mutual understanding” on military integration and counter-terrorism, and pledging further meetings with Damascus.
Downplaying the year-end deadline, he said the deal “did not specify a time limit for its ending or for the return to military solutions.”
He added that “all efforts are being made to prevent the collapse of this process” and that he considered failure unlikely.
Abdi also repeated the SDF’s demand for decentralization, which has been rejected by Syria’s Islamist authorities, who took power after ousting longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.
Turkiye, an important ally of Syria’s new leaders, sees the presence of Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat.
In Damascus this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed the importance of the Kurds’ integration, having warned the week before that patience with the SDF “is running out.”
The SDF control large swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, and with the support of a US-led international coalition, were integral to the territorial defeat of the Daesh group in Syria in 2019.
Syria last month joined the anti-IS coalition and has announced operations against the jihadist group in recent days.
