U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the U.N. Security Council should consider implementing measures to punish those responsible for arms smuggling from Syria to Lebanon. "I think the United Nations Security Council owes it to Lebanon and it owes it to its own resolution to look very seriously at how this is happening and to propose ways that the perpetrators could be deterred from doing it or punished if they continue to do it," Rice said in an interview on Al-Hurra television channel Thursday.
While agreeing that the smuggling of arms is a violation of Security Council resolution 1701 and a serious problem for its implementation, Rice confirmed that the Europeans are working with the Lebanese government "to try to enhance the capability of the Lebanese army to deal with this." "The Lebanese army has intercepted several shipments Â… the Lebanese have made available information about some of this smuggling," she said. |