Syria ‘ready for regional war’: Attacks won’t stop soon: Rice
BEIRUT, Aug 6: Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Sunday said Damascus was ready for regional war and condemned a draft UN resolution seeking to end the violence in Lebanon as merely a recipe for more conflict.
“If Israel attacked Syria by any means from the ground or the air, our leadership has ordered the armed forces to reply immediately,” he said, after meeting with pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.
Muallem, who was due to participate on Monday in Beirut in an Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on Israel’s devastating 26-day-old offensive on Lebanon, also condemned a UN draft resolution on the conflict in Lebanon.
The UN draft resolution, sponsored by the United States and France, called for a “full cessation” of fighting, but not for the immediate pullout of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
“The UN resolution is a recipe for the continuation of the (ongoing) war (between Israel and Hezbollah) ... and a recipe for civil war (in Lebanon) that nobody has interest in, but Israel,” Muallem said.
“We defend Lebanon and its resistance against any plan that they try to impose on it through UN Security Council resolutions which do not reflect the Lebanese military victory over the Israeli army,” he said.
“The American-French draft totally favours Israel.”
RICE: In Crawford, Texas, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned that a UN resolution would not stop all the fighting in southern Lebanon, calling it a first step toward a lasting cessation of violence.
Rice, who came here to consult with President George W. Bush about the Middle East crisis, told reporters it was important to get a vote on the United Nations resolution in the next day or two.
UN Security Council envoys are attempting to put the finishing touches on a resolution drafted by France and the United States calling for a halt to fighting between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas and setting terms for a settlement.
Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley said a vote could come on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.
If that resolution can be quickly voted on, Rice said, “I would hope that you would see very early an end to large-scale violence.”
That does not necessarily mean an end to all fighting in the short run because “these things take a while to wind down,” and there could be skirmishes for some time to come, she said.
“We’re trying to deal with a problem that has been festering and brewing in Lebanon now for years and years and years. So it’s not going to be solved by one resolution in the Security Council,” Rice said.—Agencies
