US Ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard told Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Tuesday her country was concerned over the growing role of Hezbollah, which is represented in the new cabinet.
The armed Shi'ite group, which is backed by Iran and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, controls three of the 30 ministries in Hariri's new cabinet, the largest number it has ever held. They include the Health Ministry, which has the fourth-largest budget in the state.
After meeting with Hariri in Beirut on Tuesday, Richard said: “I was also very frank with the Prime Minister about US concern over the growing role in the cabinet of an organization that continues to maintain a militia that is not under the control of the government, that continues to make its own national security decisions, decisions that endanger the rest of the country and that continues to violate the government's disassociation policy by participating in armed conflict in at least three other countries”.
The US Ambassador hoped that Lebanon would not be derailed from the path of progress now before it, and said her country was proud to be the largest provider of development, humanitarian and security assistance to Lebanon.
In just this last year alone, the United States provided more than 825 million dollars in US Assistance and that is an increase over the previous year.
“We came to review the breadth and depth of the US support available for education and development, for helping Lebanese communities deal with the unprecedented demands placed on them when their Syrian neighbors fled the brutal Assad regime, for building a capable and respected military that protects its citizens under the sovereign control of their elected leaders and for addressing a range of difficult economic issues,” she said.
Richard congratulated Hariri on the new government and said she reviewed with him a very broad range of areas in which the United States are already working with Lebanon.
“From the time of the first Lebanese who emigrated from Lebanon to the United States in the 1850s, to the establishment by Americans of the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University, to today as we invest over a billion dollars in a new Embassy compound in Awkar, we want to continue our long-standing and comprehensive support for Lebanon,” she stressed.
