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| Spanish FM: Syria to exercise its influence on Hezbollah
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Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos
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BRUSSELS (EJP)--- Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has declared that “Syria will exercise its influence on Hezbollah if circumstances change in Lebanon.”
“The Syrians are going to exercise all their influence on Hezbollah, but the circumstances and political and military context of Lebanon must change,” Moratinos told reporters after after a meeting Thursday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials.
"Syria is part of the solution to solve regional complicated problems ... and common stances have been reached," Moratinos said, warning that the situation in the Middle East has become very dangerous and might lead to passive reflections against all.
He said that he reached an agreement with the Syrian side on the need to let all parties concerned take part in seeking solutions to the current crisis.
"We came to the conclusion that there is no military solution to any conflict or crisis in the Middle East and we have to call for immediate ceasefire and a political package," he said.
He said Syria backs Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora’s seven-point plan to end the conflict.
Siniora’s plan called for a ceasefire; the return of refugees; the exchange of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners; the need to settle the issue of the disputed Shebaa Farms region; extending the state’s control over all national territory; limiting arms possession to state institutions; boosting UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon; and reviving the 1949 armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
"I will go back to Madrid with more hope after I received a constructive and fruitful response from Syria", Moratinos said, adding that he would brief the Finnish EU presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana on his talks here.
EU’s contacts
According to diplomatic sources in Brussels, Moratinos’s visit to Damascus after talks with Lebanese leaders in Beirut, is viewed as an attempt by the EU to reach out to Hezbollah’s main backers in the region, Iran and Syria.
At an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict earlier this week, Solana said : “We have contacts with all the states in the region, including Syria and Iran.”
Solana has been asked by the EU Council to remain engaged and to remain in contact with all relevant parties and to be ready to contribute to a political solution and to the peace process,” said a statement issued after the EU meeting.
Solana said Moratinos, a former EU Mideast envoy, would be talking to the Syrians “doubtless on behalf of all of us, including myself”.
“There can be no effective solution without Syria,” Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said after EU’s meeting.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy met his Iranian counterpart, Manoucher Mottaki, in Beirut last Sunday and raised critics by saying Iran “plays a stabilising role in the region”.
He later sought to clarify his remark, saying: “Iran has a share of responsibility in the current situation, so Iran can play a role in its solution, and can therefore contribute to stabilisation in the region.”
But beyond making Syrian and Iranian leaders feel respected, it is not clear what the Europeans can offer to persuade Damascus or Tehran to lean on Hezbollah to stop firing missiles into Israel or accept eventual disarmament.
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