Lebanese officials on Monday frostily rejected a warning from US Secretary of State Colin Powell that aggressive actions from southern Lebanon against Israel could lead to wider Middle East conflict. Lebanese President Emile Lahoud told Powell that Hezbollah guerrilla 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. President Lahoud stressed that developments in the region cannot be isolated from the Lebanese scene, mainly give Israel's escalation of its aggression on the Palestinians on Palestinian territories, Hammud said.
In sometimes acerbic comments that summarized Lehoud's talks with Powell, Hammud added that the Jewish state had not complied with UN 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 (Palestinian uprising) 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. Bureau Report