US envoy Thomas Barrack said Monday he was satisfied by the Lebanese authorities’ response to a request to disarm Hezbollah, which was heavily weakened in a recent war with Israel.
“I’m unbelievably satisfied with the response,” Barrack, Washington’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, told a press conference after meeting President Joseph Aoun.
“It’s thoughtful, it’s considered. We’re creating a go-forward plan. To create that, we need dialogue. What the government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time,” he said.
Lebanese leaders who took office in the aftermath of a two-month war between Israel and Hezbollah last year have vowed a state monopoly on bearing arms, while demanding Israel comply with a November ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Sunday his group would not surrender or lay down its weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure on the Lebanese militants to disarm.
“Hezbollah is a political party. It also has a militant aspect to it. Hezbollah needs to see that there’s a future for them, that that road is not harnessed just solely against them, and that there’s an intersection of peace and prosperity for them also,” Barrack said.
He warned that “the rest of the region is moving at Mach speed, and you will be left behind”, noting that “dialogue has started between Syria and Israel, just as the dialogue needs to be reinvented by Lebanon.”
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