Connelly Meets Aoun: Hizbullah’s Claims against U.S. Attempt to Divert Attention from Tensions in Party
U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly stated on Wednesday that Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s recent statements against the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon are aimed at “deflecting attention away from internal tensions in the party.”
She said after holding talks with Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun: “We discussed the new government and I repeated the U.S. decision which is we will judge the new government by its composition, its ministerial statement, and the actions it takes.”
“Of course I reiterated our expectation that the new government will continue to respect Lebanon’s international obligations including those related to the Security Council resolution 1701 and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon,” she added.
On the situation in Syria, the ambassador stressed: “We expect the Syrian regime to engage in meaningful dialogue with its opposition and we support the right of the Syrian people to free expression and we want to see the regime end its suppression of that right.”
“I also noted the positive steps taken by the Lebanese authorities to fulfill Lebanon’s international obligations to protect Syrian citizens who cross into Lebanon to flee the violence in Syria,” she said.
On Friday, Nasrallah announced that members of his party had confessed to being CIA agents and accused Israel of turning to the U.S. spy agency when it failed to infiltrate his Iran-backed group.
In the first such acknowledgment of infiltration since the group's founding in the 1980's, he refused to disclose the identities of the two party members but said a third case was under investigation, slamming the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon as a "den of spies."
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