Druze leader warns against making Lebanon ‘Iranian satellite’

AFP: Hezbollah’s campaign of mass protests calling for Lebanon’s Western-backed government to resign are part of a wider strategy to turn the country into an “Iranian satellite”, Lebanon’s anti-Syrian Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said here Thursday. OPORTO, Portugal, Dec 7, 2006 (AFP) – Hezbollah’s campaign of mass protests calling for Lebanon’s Western-backed government to resign are part of a wider strategy to turn the country into an “Iranian satellite”, Lebanon’s anti-Syrian Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said here Thursday.

“The government is under siege by Hezbollah. Syria and Iran want to reverse this democratically elected government to turn Lebanon into a satellite of Iran,” he told a congress of European socialists being held in Portugal.

Jumblatt, the current leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon, said the fall of the government would also prevent those responsible for the killing of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and several other anti-Syrian politicians over the past two years from being punished.

The Druze leader has blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the assassinations.

Thousands of supporters of Hezbollah and other pro-Syrian parties have been camped out for a week in squares near government headquarters in central Beirut to try to topple the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

The seventh congress of European socialists was also attended by leaders of left-wing governments in Spain, Italy and Portugal as well as by party leaders from across Europe.