UNITED KINGDOM: Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora meets with British counterpart Gordon Brown, says upcoming arab summit in Syria at risk without Lebanon solution

Record ID: 644935

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora meets with British counterpart Gordon Brown, says upcoming arab summit in Syria at risk without Lebanon solution
  • Date: 20th February 2008
  • Summary: (MER-2) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (FEBRUARY 19, 2008) (REUTERS) SINIORA WALKING INTO THE DORCHESTER HOTEL
  • Embargoed: 6th March 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: United Kingdom
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAERTPUI2X1OG96Q98QFVCOGOJY
  • Story Text: Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora meets with his British counterpart in Downing Street and talks about the situation in Lebanon in an exclusive interview with Reuters.
    Next month's Arab summit in Syria will collapse if a solution to Lebanon's political crisis cannot be found by then, Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said on Tuesday (February 19).
    The election of a new Lebanese president has been obstructed since November and Siniora told Reuters in an interview efforts were being made to fill the post and prevent a power vacuum, after the worst street clashes since the 1975-90 civil war.
    Siniora, whose anti-Syrian ruling coalition is locked in a 15-month power struggle against an opposition led by Shi'ite Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, said that without a Lebanese president -- and the possibility that other Arab leaders could boycott the gathering in solidarity -- the summit would lose its value.
    After meeting with prime minister Gordon Brown, Siniora told reporters that Britain is a strong ally of his government and a strong supporter of the Arab initiative.
    "I detected great support from the (British) prime minister for Lebanon, for its independence and autonomy, for the election of a president, for the current constitutional and legitimate government, and for the Arab initiative," he said outside No. 10 Downing Street.
    Diplomats say Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is unlikely to attend the Arab League's annual summit unless Lebanon's political deadlock is resolved.
    Asked whether Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, might not send top-level representation or even boycott the summit, Siniora said no decisions had been reached.
    "First of all I am not authorised to speak for any other Arab country. However, we do observe a strong desire, even an insistence, for the speedy election of a Lebanese president, so that Lebanon can be represented by its president (at the Arab summit). I believe that this issue will be discussed within the next few weeks, and we will know what the possible outcomes are regarding holding the summit, and at what level, and who the representatives of Lebanon and the other Arab countries will be," he told Reuters in an exclusive interview.
    Saudi Arabia has emerged as a leading Arab power in recent years, as surging world oil prices have enabled the U.S. ally to play a more forceful role in settling regional disputes.
    Riyadh has thrown its weight behind the Siniora government and mediated between Beirut and Damascus.
    But as tensions have risen between Lebanon and Syria it recently warned its citizens not to travel to Lebanon because of deteriorating security and following strains in ties between both countries over Lebanon.
    France, another ally of Siniora's, has just closed two of its cultural centres in Lebanon for the same reason.
    The prime minister said both moves were triggered by the escalation in rhetoric inside Lebanon, which led to unrest in the streets.
    "I believe that the atmosphere that has been created over the past few weeks, the tension created by the actions and words of certain politicians and individuals on television programmes, the demonstrations, the threats to national security such as rioting, burning tires, the clashes here and there in which some people were killed, others were injured, and property was damaged -- innocent people who were martyrs and who shouldn't have died in such a manner -- all of this was the result of this tense atmosphere. So it began to seem to the outside world that these incidents are a prelude to something even bigger," Siniora said.
    He also said that a threat by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to spread the conflict with Israel into "open war" had raised the national and regional temperature.
    "I did express, immediately after the speech of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, that his remark was very inappropriate, even if it was made in the conditional tense. He said that if there are those who would like there to be an open war, then let it be an open war (with Israel). Nonetheless, we know that what settled in the minds of many -- both in Lebanon and abroad -- is that it seemed as if Sayyed Hassan was calling for an open war. This will certainly not be in the interests of Hezbollah, or Lebanon, or Arab causes, or the cause of Islam," he said.
    Siniora said Lebanon has already paid a high price for attacks carried out by Hezbollah against U.S. and Western targets, implicitly referring to Imad Moughniyah, the Hezbollah military commander who was killed last week in a car bomb in Damascus.
    Hezbollah and its main backer Iran accused Israel of assassinating him.
    Israel rejected the charge, though its Mossad spy service had long sought to kill him.
    Moughniyah was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping forces in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner as well as the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
    Israel accuses Moughniyah of planning the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires and involvement in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital.
    Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended in 1990 with a Saudi-brokered peace pact which has been strained to breaking point since the assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
    The governing coalition accuses Syria of killing Hariri and other anti-Syrian figures assassinated since his death. Syria denies any involvement.
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