Region | Lebanon
US warships off Lebanon are not helping to resolve crisis
Russia told the UN Security Council on Monday that the presence of US Navy warships in the Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon was not helping resolve the country's political crisis.
- AP
- Published: 23:41 March 11, 2008
United Nations: Russia told the UN Security Council on Monday that the presence of US Navy warships in the Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon was not helping resolve the country's political crisis.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, said he raised the US deployment at a closed council meeting on implementation of the UN ceasefire resolution that ended the 33-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in August 2006.
"We pointed out the fact that basically all Lebanese political forces expressed their concern about that, including the government of Prime Minister (Fouad) Siniora, and we have said that such acts were bringing up some unwanted historical analogies," he said.
"So we did not see it as a constructive contribution to the situation in Lebanon," Churkin said.
Siniora's Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition have been locked in a 15-month power struggle, with Hezbollah and its allies trying to force out Siniora's administration.
The deadlock has prevented the country from electing a president since November, leaving the post empty in a dangerous power vacuum.
Siniora has said his government did not ask for the ships and that they were not in territorial waters. Some in his coalition said they were surprised by the deployment.
The new US deployment of warships brought back memories of the bloody American involvement in Lebanon in the 1980s, during the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
In 1983, at the height of US intervention, about 17 warships patrolled the Lebanese coastline, bombarding militia positions on shore. The last time US ships came to Lebanon was during the 2006 war when the American Navy helped evacuate Americans.
The resolution ending the 2006 war reiterates a call for the disarming of all militias and bans arms transfers to them- demands which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report to the council last week were not being implemented.
He added that ''the repercussions of the continuing political crisis in Lebanon, which has cut down the work of key state institutions,'' were also having a 'significant' effect on implementation of the ceasefire resolution.
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe has called the deployment "a show of support for regional stability" and said President George W. Bush is concerned about the situation in Lebanon.
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