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Syria criticizes U.S. for support of Israeli attacks in Lebanon

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, February 15, 2000

NICOSIA -- Syrian officials have strongly criticized the United States for defending Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians and they blamed Washington for undermining the Middle East peace process.

The Damascus-based state-run radio said the U.S. administration's support of the Israeli attacks has undermined its role as impartial arbiter.

"U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has reiterated the remarks of her spokesman James Rubin pinning the blame [for this month's upsurge of fighting in south Lebanon] on the Lebanese national resistance," Damascus state radio said Sunday. "This biased U.S. attitude is all the more extraordinary because it concerns a barbarous attack on an independent Arab state," the radio said. "It is only making any prospect of peace [in the Middle East] yet more distant," the radio said.

Israel pounded Lebanon's power grid last Monday night, wounding 18 civilians and inflicting heavy damage on Lebanon's power grid. The Israeli air strikes were in retaliation for the loss of five of its soldiers in south Lebanon in just two weeks in attacks by Syrian-backed Hizbullah guerrillas.

Since then, two more Israeli soldiers have been killed in Hizbullah attacks.

Hizbullah guerrillas mounted a fresh attack against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Saturday, a day after they killed a seventh Israeli soldier and seriously wounded another.

Israeli military officials said the guerrillas fired several U.S.-made TOW missiles at the Israeli outpost in Bayyada overlooking the southern port city of Tyre, which is about a mile from the Israeli border. There were no reports of casualties from the afternoon attack. Israel returned fire.

On Sunday, Hizbulah guerrillas attacked Israeli and a South Lebanese Army outpost in Dabshe, two miles north of the Israeli . The attack triggered Israeli artillery bombardment of suspected guerrilla hideouts.

No casualties were reported but an Israeli soldier was killed in a similar attack at the outpost on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called on Damascus to rein in the guerrillas saying: "Hizbullah is an enemy of peace."I have talked to the Syrian foreign minister about using all possible influence that they might have ... they have tried but I think they need to work harder on it," she said on Friday.

But Damascus state radio said, "it is Israel that needs to be reined in and prevented from launching fresh attacks before peace talks can resume and not a resistance group fighting its occupation."

"The men of the Lebanese resistance are not hostile to peace," Al Baath, the mouthpiece of the ruling Baath party, wrote on Sunday. "It is Israel's crimes and criminal threats against Lebanon that are incompatible with peace," the paper said.

Tuesday, February 15, 2000


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