A U.S. envoy met Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday to discuss a proposed plan to disarm Hezbollah, hours after Israel launched new air strikes and a cross-border ground assault.
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and U.S. special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, Reuters/Mohamed Azakir
A U.S. envoy met Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday to discuss a proposed plan to disarm Hezbollah, hours after Israel launched new air strikes and a cross-border ground assault.
The Israeli escalation was seen by Lebanese officials and diplomats as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on Hezbollah, whose leader Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Sunday that the group still needed arms to defend Lebanon from Israel.
Hezbollah emerged badly damaged from a war with Israel last year that eliminated much of the group's leadership, killed thousands of its fighters and left tens of thousands of its supporters displaced from their destroyed homes.
The group has been under pressure in recent months both within Lebanon and from Washington to completely relinquish its weapons. It is weighing shrinking its arsenal, sources told Reuters last week, without disarming in full.
U.S. envoy Thomas Barrack's proposal, delivered to Lebanese officials during his last visit on June 19, would see Hezbollah fully disarmed within four months in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli troops occupying several posts in south Lebanon and a halt to Israeli air strikes.
Lebanon formed a committee to draft a response. Hezbollah was expected to provide its own feedback to its ally, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, to incorporate into a counter-proposal being prepared in time for Barrack's Monday visit.
The group did not make its response public, but two sources familiar with its deliberations said Hezbollah had told Berri it would not discuss giving up any more arms before Israeli troops fully left Lebanon and without guarantees Israel would stop targeting group members.
Hezbollah had already relinquished a number of weapons depots in southern Lebanon to the Lebanese army in line with a U.S.-brokered truce that ended last year's war.
The truce also stipulates that Israeli troops withdraw. Hezbollah has pointed to the troops' continued occupation of at least five posts in southern Lebanon as a main violation.
Reporting by Maya Gebeily
Hezbollah has begun a major strategic review in the wake of its devastating war with Israel, including considering scaling back its role as an armed movement without disarming completely, three sources familiar with the deliberations say.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Thursday against a network that smuggles Iranian oil disguised as Iraqi oil, and on a Hezbollah-controlled financial institution, the Treasury Department said.
Israel is interested in establishing official diplomatic ties with old foes Syria and Lebanon, but will not negotiate the fate of the Golan Heights in any peace agreement, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in a press conference on Monday.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.