Lean on Hezbollah, Syria told

2006-07-23 21:04

Washington - US administration officials admonished Syria on Sunday to stop supporting Hezbollah while rebuffing an offer by Damascus for direct talks on the Lebanon crisis.

"Syria doesn't need dialogue to know what they need to do," US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told the Fox News Sunday television programme.

"They need to lean on Hezbollah to get them to release the two captured Israeli soldiers and stop the launch of rockets against innocent Israeli civilians," Bolton said.

White House chief of staff Josh Bolten also said that Syria must cut off its backing of the Shi'ite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

"There's going to have to be a pretty strong showing from the Syrians on genuine interest in withdrawing their long-standing support for Hezbollah" in order to open direct talks, he said.

On Saturday, Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Mukdad said Damascus was ready to talk with the US about the Lebanon conflict on the condition that Washington engages on the question of Israeli occupation of neighbouring lands.

Direct talks

"It has been Syria's ongoing position that we are ready to have a dialogue with the United States," he said.

Top US legislators senator Richard Lugar and senator Christopher Dodd said in television interviews on Sunday that the US should hold direct talks with Syria.

But ambassador Bolton insisted the problem was Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Washington blames for sparking the crisis by seizing Israeli soldiers and firing rockets on Israel.

"If the Syrians would do all the things they already know they are supposed to do, that would be a major step forward," Bolton said, citing UN security council resolution 1559 on Lebanon.

The resolution requires the disarming of all militia in Lebanon - including Hezbollah - and for full respect of Lebanon's political independence.

The White House's Bolten said on NBC television's Meet the Press programme on Sunday that the US administration had very close contacts with Syria from 2001-2005, but that it had no affect on Damascus's policies.

"They continued to allow terrorism to flourish. They supported it. They supported Hezbollah," Bolten said.

"It's only when we began to put some pressure on Syria in the form of isolation that the Syrians ultimately withdrew themselves from Lebanon" in the wake of the assassination of former Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri, he said.

Close ties

But Syrian ambassador to the United States Imad Moustapha blamed Washington's refusal to talk on its close ties to Israel.

"The US policy towards the Middle East has been totally hijacked by Israeli policies in the Middle East," Moustapha said Sunday on the CBS programme Face the Nation.

"Whoever dares to oppose the Israeli occupation and annexation policies in the Middle East immediately gets labelled as a terrorist, and gets discredited."

Ambassador Bolton emphasised the need to dismantle Hezbollah's armed militia before talks could be productive.

"What we want to do is come out of this situation strengthening the legitimate government of Lebanon, the democratically elected government, not this state-within-a-state that Hezbollah constitutes," Bolton said.

But Moustapha denied that Syria provides arms to Hezbollah.

"We don't furnish weapons to Hezbollah because we do not produce weapons in Syria. We support Hezbollah because Hezbollah is a national liberation movement."

- AFP