US wants Lebanon to talk to Israel about Shebaa

BEIRUT: A US initiative to resolve the dispute over the occupied Shebaa Farms is still on the table, and is being considered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, An-Nahar newspaper’s correspondent in Washington on Wednesday quoted an American official as saying.

“The essence of the proposal is that Lebanon engages in indirect negotiations over the fate of Shebaa Farms, either through United Nations mediation or through an intermediary of the Tripartite Military Committee that groups Israel, Lebanon, and the UN,” An-Nahar said.

The same official and other US officials told An-Nahar that placing the territory under UN guardianship following an Israeli withdrawal, as Lebanon has demanded, would not be possible “before the final status of the zone has been determined.”

“The officials argue that Lebanon must engage in negotiations with the Jewish state before any Israeli pullout from the Farms,” the daily reported.

The Shebaa Farms is adjacent to the Syrian Golan Heights, on Lebanon’s southeast border. Both Syria and Lebanon have publicly stated that the land is Lebanese. Israel, which invaded the land in 1967 along with Syrian territories, refuses to withdraw from the farms.

According to one US official, quoted by An-Nahar, “although the US acknowledges that Lebanon cannot engage in direct negotiations with Israel, it contends that Beirut’s previous pretexts that it cannot hold indirect talks with the Jewish state are no longer valid, in view of the indirect Turkish-brokered Syrian-Israeli negotiations and the recent German-mediated prisoner swap deal between Hizbullah and Israel.”
The US officials said that those indirect negotiations had created “a new dynamic” that Lebanon could exploit if it wished to “break way from its traditional thinking with regard to indirect talks with Israel.”

Regarding the Lebanese-Syrian border demarcation, the US officials told An-Nahar that Beirut must ask Damascus “publicly and clearly” to define the border between the two countries in the Shebaa Farms area.

They stressed that statements by Syrian officials regarding Lebanon’s ownership of Shebaa Farms had “no legal weight,” since the UN accepts only official agreements between states accompanied by the submission of joint documents to the world body that confirm that.

The officials also said that Lebanon must take “brave decisions” with regard to the Shebaa Farms, which confirm its capacity to make “sovereign decisions” in its dealings with Syria and Israel.

They said that Washington was willing to offer “technical and logistical” assistance, as well as political support to the proposed indirect negotiations between Lebanon and Israel over the occupied zone. They added that the US could play the role of “a facilitator in the implementation of any agreement that might be reached.” – The Daily Star

Washington Dismisses Hizbullah Criticism for USS Cole Deployment

United States on Friday shrugged off Hizbullah’s criticisms of the deployment of a U.S. warship to waters off Lebanon and insisted the show of force meant to promote stability.
“On Hizbullah’s concerns, I would express some of our own concerns with Hezbollah’s actions. So I’ll just leave it at that,” White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters.

Johndroe sidestepped questions about comments from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora, who said Friday that his government did not ask Washington to send the USS Cole guided-missile destroyer to the area.

“We have regular consultations with Prime Minister Saniora and his government, as well as our allies, both in the immediate region, as well as in Europe on the situation in Lebanon,” said the spokesman.

“There’s constant communication at various levels. But let’s be clear: The purpose of the U.S. Navy ships in the eastern Mediterranean is a show of support for regional stability,” amid Lebanon’s political crisis, he emphasized.

“I know we share with Prime Minister Saniora a desire for the situation in Lebanon to be resolved, and resolved by the Lebanese people,” said Johndroe.

“We did not ask anyone to send warships,” Saniora said in a speech during a meeting with Arab ambassadors that was broadcast live on television, adding that no U.S. warship was in “Lebanese waters.”

Before Friday’s speech Saniora also summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires to ask her for “clarifications” about the dispatch of the USS Cole, a government source told AFP.

Lebanon has been without a president since last November amid political feuding between the Western-backed ruling parliamentary majority and the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran.(AFP)