Barack Obama voices concern over Hezbollah role

Washington: US President Barack Obama told his Lebanese counterpart on Monday he was concerned about Lebanese Hezbollah militants fighting in Syria to support Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, the White House said.

Obama and Lebanese President Michel Sulaiman spoke by telephone the same day Syrian activists said about 30 Hezbollah fighters and 20 Syrian soldiers and militiamen loyal to Al Assad had been killed in the fiercest fighting this year in the rebel stronghold of Qusayr.

Lebanon has maintained a policy of “dissociation” from Syria’s two-year-old conflict. But many Lebanese officials believe their country is at risk of being dragged into the civil war.

“President Obama expressed his appreciation to President Sulaiman and the Lebanese people for keeping Lebanon’s borders open and hosting refugees from Syria, and pledged continued US support to help Lebanon manage this challenge,” the White House said in a statement summarising their phone call.

It said the two leaders agreed that “all parties should respect Lebanon’s policy of disassociation from the conflict in Syria and avoid actions that will involve the Lebanese people in the conflict.”

Increasing intervention

Sunday’s death toll in Qusayr highlighted the increasing intervention in Syria by Al Assad’s allies in Hezbollah, a Shiite guerrilla group originally set up by Iran in the 1980s to fight Israeli occupation troops in south Lebanon.

“President Obama stressed his concern about Hezbollah’s active and growing role in Syria, fighting on behalf of the [Al] Assad regime, which is counter to the Lebanese government’s policies,” the White House said.

Lebanon suffered its own civil war from 1975 to 1990 and endured a military presence by Syria, its historically dominant neighbour, for 29 years until 2005.

Meanwhile, five people have been killed and about 50 wounded in two days of fighting in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, security sources said on Monday, a spillover of violence from the civil war in Syria.

Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy gunfire shook the city on Sunday night but exchanges tapered off into sporadic sniper fire by daytime.

Tension in Qusayr

Syrian activists say the latest fighting in Tripoli, where an Alawite minority lives on a hill overlooking the mainly Sunni port city, was ignited by tension over an assault by Syrian troops backed by Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militia on the rebel-held Syrian border town of Qusayr.

Three people were killed in the Sunni district of Bab Tabbaneh and another in the adjacent Alawite neighbourhood of Jebel Mohsin, the security sources said. The fifth fatality was a Lebanese soldier.

Sunnis in Lebanon mostly sympathise with the Sunni-led revolt against Al Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite sect.

Lebanese militants are believed to be crossing the border to join fighting in Syria on both sides of a conflict which has sometimes bubbled over into Lebanon, especially in Tripoli.