BEIRUT (Reuters) -A U.S. envoy met Lebanese officials in Beirut on Monday to discuss a proposed plan to disarm Hezbollah, hours after Israel launched new air strikes and a cross-border ground assault.
The Israeli escalation was seen by Lebanese officials and diplomats as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on Hezbollah, whose leader Naim Qassem said in a televised speech on Sunday that the group still needed arms to defend Lebanon from Israel.
Hezbollah emerged badly damaged from a war with Israel last year that eliminated much of the group’s leadership, killed thousands of its fighters and left tens of thousands of its supporters displaced from their destroyed homes.
The group has been under pressure in recent months both within Lebanon and from Washington to completely relinquish its weapons. It is weighing shrinking its arsenal, sources told Reuters last week, without disarming in full.
U.S. envoy Thomas Barrack’s proposal, delivered to Lebanese officials during his last visit on June 19, would see Hezbollah fully disarmed within four months in exchange for the withdrawal of Israeli troops occupying several posts in south Lebanon and a halt to Israeli air strikes.
Lebanon formed a committee to draft a response. Hezbollah was expected to provide its own feedback to its ally, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, to incorporate into a counter-proposal being prepared in time for Barrack’s Monday visit.
The group did not make its response public, but two sources familiar with its deliberations said Hezbollah had told Berri it would not discuss giving up any more arms before Israeli troops fully left Lebanon and without guarantees Israel would stop targeting group members.
Hezbollah had already relinquished a number of weapons depots in southern Lebanon to the Lebanese army in line with a U.S.-brokered truce that ended last year’s war.
The truce also stipulates that Israeli troops withdraw. Hezbollah has pointed to the troops’ continued occupation of at least five posts in southern Lebanon as a main violation.
(Reporting by Maya GebeilyEditing by Peter Graff)
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