Israel was left “perplexed” by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana’s unprecedented meeting with an official from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a foreign ministry spokesman said on yesterday.
Saturday’s meeting in Beirut between Solana and Hezbollah Member of Parliament Hussein Hajj Hassan was part of an outreach by European powers to Hezbollah, which the US and Israel consider a terrorist group.
Solana was in Beirut to reaffirm Europe’s support for Lebanon after the June 7 parliamentary polls.
PHOTO: AP
“This meeting left us perplexed, and we dare hope that Mr. Solana took advantage of the occassion to press for a disarming of Hezbollah and for the end of the arms smuggling between Syria and Hezbollah,” Yigal Palmor said.
“Lists of terrorist groups are not the same in every country,” Solana told a news conference when asked about the US blacklist of the Shiite militant group.
“Hezbollah is a member of the Lebanese society and it is represented in the Lebanese parliament and it will bear responsibilities,” he said before leaving for Egypt at the end of a two-day visit.
Britain has also had contacts in recent months with Hezbollah’s political wing in what it has described as an attempt to encourage the group to abandon violence and play a constructive political role in the deeply divided country.
The group’s political role was left uncertain after Hezbollah and its allies suffered a major setback in last week’s parliamentary election. The pro-Western coalition that defeated it could form a national unity government that includes Hezbollah and its partners.
Fears that a Hezbollah victory could have increased the influence of the group’s Iranian backers helped swing the vote against it.
Hassan said his meeting with Solana was a “goodwill gesture from the European Union toward Hezbollah” and an attempt by the EU “to get to know Hezbollah better and to keep contacts with it.”
Hassan said he briefed Solana on what he said were Israel’s almost daily military flights over Lebanon in breach of a UN resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.
He also spoke of the alleged Israeli spy networks in Lebanon.
Lebanese authorities have arrested about 100 people suspected of spying for or collaborating with Israel in recent weeks.
Hassan also told Solana that the sensitive issue of whether to disarm Hezbollah was being dealt with in political discussions led by Lebanese President Michel Suleiman.
Political factions have so far failed to agree on a defense strategy to possibly integrate Hezbollah’s arsenal of rockets into the Lebanese armed forces.
Hezbollah has rejected local and international calls to disarm, saying its weapons are essential to defend Lebanon against any Israeli attack. The group led a guerrilla war against Israel’s 18-year occupation of a border strip in southern Lebanon that ended in 2000.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS