Lebanon has “moral obligation” to reject Assad “butchery” – U.S.

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lebanon has a moral obligation to support the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and should use upcoming elections to reject "the apologists of Assad's butchery," a senior US official said, according to AFP.

In strongly worded remarks, Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, paid tribute to Lebanese who took to the streets after ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination in 2005, leading Syria to withdraw troops it had stationed in its smaller neighbor for nearly 30 years.

Feltman, who was US ambassador in Beirut during the so-called Cedar Revolution, said that supporters of Lebanon had a "moral as well as political obligation" to support Syrians fighting to topple Assad.

"No one outside of Syria understands the brutality of Bashar al-Assad better than the Lebanese. No one outside of Syria has more of a stake in the outcome than the Lebanese," Feltman told a Lebanese American reception.

Feltman said that the Cedar Revolution had not yet achieved a Lebanon "free of Assad's manipulation" and of Iranian influence and urged Lebanese to look ahead to parliamentary elections due next year.

Feltman was likely referring to Hezbollah, the Lebanon Shiite group supported by Assad and Iran's clerical regime. Hezbollah dominates Lebanon's government, although the United States considers it to be a terrorist group.

A special UN-backed tribunal sent Lebanese authorities arrest warrants for four Hezbollah members over the 2005 car bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people including the suicide bomber. But Lebanese authorities did not arrest them and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon instead plans to try the four in absentia.

Assad is facing major protests that pose the biggest threat to his family's four-decade rule over Syria. Rights activists say more than 9,100 people have died in a year-long crackdown to crush the uprising.