Lebanon leader puts onus of blame on US

Badgered by Hezbollah and jeered as a puppet of the US government, Lebanon's prime minister on Feb. 6 blamed US support of Israel for an increasingly violent political crisis that has shredded his country's stability. His voice rising in frustration, Fouad Siniora said the troubles in his nation would subside if US officials were to press Israel to withdraw its soldiers from Shabaa Farms, a small patch of disputed turf that the United Nations has said was part of Syria. The lingering occupation of the land has long been cited by Hezbollah as a justification for its armed guerrilla fighters on Israel's border. But the US has ignored his pleas, Siniora said. Lebanese leaders complain that the United States failed to help Siniora when it mattered most, during last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. Israeli bombs pounded this country for weeks. An increasingly desperate Siniora wept on television and implored the US to intervene to stop the Israeli onslaught. But Washington refused to ask for a cease-fire. In the final 36 hours of the war, Israel stepped up its shelling of southern Lebanon and unleashed a torrent of cluster bombs. More than a million bomblets and 380,000 land mines remain on Lebanese land. "In the Arab world there were always a lot of complaints and grievances against the United States…. They've pushed the Arab world toward extremism," Siniora said. The Arabs are "being humiliated every day. [The US] can see with their own eyes the Israelis are subjugating the Palestinians." In the nearly six months since a cease-fire stopped the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Siniora has come under harsh attack from the Islamic militant group and its allies, who cursed his government as a US puppet and demanded more power. Mass demonstrations outside his office have dragged on for months, sparking street fighting and dredging up dark memories of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, a conflict that finally faded out in the early 1990s.