Last month two Democratic lawmakers said they were holding up $100 million of US funding for Lebanon’s army after a cross-border clash between Lebanon and Israel.
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, speaking after talks in Beirut with Prime Minister Saad Hariri, said the United States was committed to supporting Lebanon’s armed forces. “We are working closely with members of the US Congress to resolve the concerns they have over this assistance,” she said after the meeting.
Washington has provided $720 million to Lebanon’s poorly equipped army since 2006. It says the aid aims to strengthen the military at the expense of the Shiite group Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day with Israel four years ago.
But after last month’s border clash, in which two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and a senior Israeli officer were killed, some US politicians said the funding should be halted.
A day after they raised their objections, Iran’s ambassador to Beirut said that his country was ready to “cooperate with the Lebanese army in any area that would help the military in performing its national role in defending Lebanon.”
Israel said at the time it had complained to Washington and Paris about arming Lebanon’s military because the weapons were being used against it. The US State Department said it was not aware that any US equipment had been used during the Aug. 3 clash. Lebanon’s Cabinet urged rival political parties to engage in dialogue amid an escalating war of words between Hariri’s camp and Hezbollah that has raised fears of sectarian violence.
“The Cabinet insisted on the need to put an end to the media war, to protect state institutions (...) and to resort to dialogue,” Information Minister Tarek Mitri said after members of the unity government met late Tuesday.
The mudslinging between Hariri’s coalition and Hezbollah and its allies is largely related to a probe by a UN-backed tribunal into the murder of Hariri’s father, Rafik Hariri, who died in a seaside bombing in 2005.
The tribunal is reportedly set to implicate Hezbollah in the assassination which, at the time, drew international condemnation and forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon following a 29-year presence. Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has said it would not stand idle should any of its members be implicated and has dismissed the tribunal as an Israeli plot.
