BEIRUT, 7 August 2006 — Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem yesterday said Damascus was ready for regional war and condemned a draft UN resolution seeking to end the violence in Lebanon as merely a recipe for more conflict.
“If Israel attacked Syria by any means from the ground or the air, our leadership has ordered the armed forces to reply immediately,” he said, after meeting with pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.
Muallem, who was due to participate today in Beirut in an Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on Israel’s devastating 26-day-old offensive on Lebanon, also condemned a UN draft resolution on the conflict in Lebanon.
The UN draft resolution, sponsored by the United States and France, called for a “full cessation” of fighting, but not for the immediate pullout of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
“The UN resolution is a recipe for the continuation of the (ongoing) war (between Israel and Hezbollah) ... and a recipe for civil war (in Lebanon) that nobody has interest in, but Israel,” Muallem said.
“We defend Lebanon and its resistance against any plan that they try to impose on it through UN Security Council resolutions which do not reflect the Lebanese military victory over the Israeli Army,” he said. “The American-French draft totally favors Israel.”
Israel has said it has no plans to attack Syria but analysts have expressed fears of a wider conflict after Israel bombed Lebanese border posts close to Syria and also overflew President Bashar Assad’s palace in northern Syria in June. Addressing the US and Israel, Muallem said: “Anyone who thinks they can finish with Hezbollah by military means is harboring illusions. Hezbollah will remain steadfast...because it is defending its right and land.”
Muallem said a cease-fire could only be achieved if Israel withdrew from Lebanon, including the disputed Shebaa Farms, brokered an equitable prisoners’ swap and agreed to establish a buffer zone on both sides of the border.
Asked by reporters on his arrival by land in the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli about the possibility of a regional war, Muallem said: “Welcome to the regional war.”
“I put myself at the disposal of Hassan Nasrallah and for the defense of Lebanon,” he said, in reference to the head of the pro-Syrian Shiite group. “Hezbollah put an end to the power balance favoring Israel,” he said.
It was the first visit by a Syrian official of his rank to Lebanon since relations between the two neighbors soured and Damascus ended 29 years of military presence in the country in April 2005. Muallem said his visit was meant to “open a wide door for relations of equity, respect of sovereignty and mutual respect — away from the policy of alliances” with one party against the other in Lebanon.
“We do not want to return to Lebanon with mistakes,” he said. Syria’s pullout from Lebanon came after mass protests in Lebanon against Syria’s military and political domination.
