US warships off Lebanon worsening crisis

Russia told the UN Security Council that the presence of US Navy warships in the Mediterranean off the coast of Lebanon was not helping resolve the country’s political crisis.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the current council president, said he raised the US deployment at a closed council meeting on implementation of the UN cease-fire resolution that ended the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon in August 2006. We pointed out the fact that basically all Lebanese political forces expressed their concern about that, including the government of Prime Minister (Fuad) Saniora, and we have said that such acts were bringing up some unwanted historical analogies,’ he said. Saniora’s Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition have been locked in a 15-month power struggle, with Hezbollah and its allies trying to force out Saniora’s administration. Saniora has said his government did not ask for the ships and that they were not in territorial waters. Some in his coalition said they were surprised by the deployment. The new US deployment of warships brought back memories of the bloody American involvement in Lebanon in the 1980s, during the country’s 1975-1990 civil war. In 1983, at the height of US intervention, about 17 warships patrolled the Lebanese coastline, bombarding Muslim militia positions on shore. The last time US ships came to Lebanon was during the 2006 war when the American Navy helped evacuate Americans. The decision to send the ships appeared to be a not-too-subtle show of US force in the region as international frustration mounts over the political deadlock.
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