BEIRUT: When Fouad Siniora, Lebanon’s gentle, US-backed prime minister, plucks up the courage to snub Condoleezza Rice, it is clear that anger at American support for Israel’s onslaught has boiled over in Beirut.

Siniora, a pro-Western politician thrust into the job after last year’s assassination of former premier Rafik al-Hariri, leads a coalition government that the United States hoped would drag Lebanon out of Syria’s orbit and into its own.

But on Sunday the Sunni prime minister, enraged by an Israeli air strike that killed 54 civilians, including 37 children, told the US Secretary of State she was unwelcome in Beirut unless she came with an immediate ceasefire.

Remarkably, he later thanked Hezbollah, long a political thorn in his side, for its sacrifices to protect Lebanon.

George Joffe, lecturer at the Cambridge Centre for International Studies, said Siniora’s decision not to meet Rice was a turning point in the conflict — and for Lebanon.

“For him now to turn around to those (Americans) who were in effect his guarantors against the Syrians and say he will not talk to them until they agree to an immediate ceasefire seems to say an awful lot about the change of opinion in Lebanon.

“For Lebanese, whether they are Christian, Sunni or Shia, that is a very significant set of events,” Joffe said.

—Reuters