January 3, 2013
Hezbollah Leader Urges Lebanon to Aid in a Solution for Syria
By HWAIDA SAAD, ANNE BARNARD and CHRISTINE HAUSER
BEIRUT, Lebanon Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, openly urged the Lebanese government on Thursday to take a more active role in finding a political solution to the civil war in neighboring Syria and to open its border to refugees to avert further bloodshed.
Mr. Nasrallah, the head of the Shiite militant movement in Lebanon, addressed a ceremony in the town of Baalbek, near the Syrian border, by video link, underscoring the urgency of the need for a resolution. I call on the Lebanese government to develop its position on the Syrian crisis, Mr. Nasrallah said, speaking in observance of Arbaeen, the end of a 40-day mourning period for the death of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Lebanon must exert pressure for a political solution and a political dialogue in Syria. If military operations continue in Syria, it will be a long and bloody battle.
Mr. Nasrallah has only occasionally commented on events in Syria during speeches.
After the Syrian uprising started in March 2011, the prime minister of Lebanon, Najib Mikati, declared that the country would pursue a line of disassociation from either side, a position apparently aimed at keeping the fighting from spilling across the border. Nevertheless, there have been occasional flare-ups inside Lebanon and episodes of cross-border shelling.
Mr. Nasrallah also spoke as reports emerged of the escalating death toll among civilians. As the conflict now approaches the end of its second year, multiple reports flow in daily of civilian casualties from airstrikes, gunfire and shelling. This week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a rebel group that tracks the war from Britain, reported 45,000 deaths, mostly civilian, since the conflict began, while United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, set the number at more than 60,000, based on a new analysis of the broadest data to date.
Mr. Nasrallah also touched on the refugee problem. Last month the United Nations appealed for $1.5 billion in new aid to handle the humanitarian crisis created by the violence and predicted that the number of Syrian refugees would double to more than one million in the next six months. There are now about 160,000 registered refugees in Lebanon alone. Jordan has at least 150,000; Turkey, 140,000; Iraq, more than 65,000; and Egypt, more than 10,000. How many more are unregistered is uncertain.
While Mr. Nasrallah said the best solution for the refugees would be a halt to the violence, he said: We should deal with the Syrian refugees with purely humanitarian responsibility, without politicization of the issue. Attention must be paid to the displaced families, whatever their political background.
We, as Lebanon, cannot close the border with Syria, with our understanding of the political, security and economic risks for this massive displacement, he said.
Mr. Nasrallah also emphasized the deep connections between Lebanon and Syria.
We must recognize that Lebanon is a country mostly affected by what is going on around it, especially in Syria, because of sectarian and political diversity, and conflict of interest, he said.
Mr. Nasrallah and the Hezbollah group have kept their loyalty to Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, relatively low-key. Fighters from the movement cross the border to fight for the president, and some have been sent to protect areas important to Shiites, analysts say. With the frontier between Syria and Lebanon weakly controlled, there are concerns that it could be the focus of confrontations with Sunni fighters in a possible regional conflict.
Hezbollah officials strongly deny that the group is fighting in Syria, although Mr. Nasrallah has said that Hezbollah was providing assistance in protecting people of Lebanese heritage in Syrian villages along the border.
Efforts to find a political solution in Syria by Russia, the United Nations special envoy and others have appeared to founder in recent days as neither Mr. Assad nor his opponents have expressed a willingness to make concessions to end the bloody conflict.
Nor has there been any change in the case of James Foley, a freelance reporter for Agence France-Presse, the Global Post Web site and other news outlets who was kidnapped on Nov. 22 by unidentified gunmen in northwest Syria. His family made his disappearance public on Wednesday. Mr. Foley had survived detention by government forces in Libya while covering the conflict there.
