Date: Mar 16, 2019 Source: The Daily Star Pompeo visit to underscore U.S. support for Lebanon Hussein Dakroub| The Daily Star BEIRUT: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to visit Beirut next week during which he will underscore U.S. support for Lebanon’s legitimate state institutions, the State Department said in a statement Friday. The statement said that Pompeo’s visit to Lebanon, his first as secretary of state, would be part of a regional tour that would also take him to Israel and Kuwait from March 19 through March 23. “In Beirut, the secretary will meet with Lebanese leaders to discuss the political, security, economic and humanitarian challenges facing Lebanon,” the statement said. “The secretary’s visit will underscore U.S. support for the Lebanese people and Lebanon’s legitimate state institutions,” it added. Although the State Department did not immediately specify which point on the tour Beirut will be, a Lebanese Foreign Ministry source said Pompeo was slated to arrive here on March 22. During his quick visit, the top U.S. diplomat will meet separately with President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri, Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, an official source had told The Daily Star. Pompeo’s talks with Lebanese leaders are expected to focus on bilateral relations, U.S. military aid to the Lebanese Army, and what U.S. officials call Hezbollah’s growing role in internal Lebanese politics. The marine border dispute between Lebanon and Israel will also be discussed in Pompeo’s meetings with officials, the source added. Earlier this month, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs David Satterfield visited Beirut to prepare for Pompeo’s trip. But during meetings with senior Lebanese officials that did not include Aoun or Berri, Satterfield warned Lebanon against toeing pro-Iran policies by urging the new government to make “national choices,” not choices imposed by “external parties,” in a clear reference to Tehran’s influence in the country through Hezbollah. Satterfield last year unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a deal on the disputed maritime border between Lebanon and Israel, in light of Lebanon’s discovery of potential offshore oil and gas reserves and fears that Israel would drill in these waters. The U.N.-demarcated Blue Line currently separates Lebanon and Israel’s lands with over 200 points, but at least 13 points are disputed by the Lebanese government. Delineating the land border in its entirely would facilitate a more accurate maritime border. Pompeo’s visit comes a few days before Aoun’s planned two-day trip to Russia. While in Moscow on March 25-26, his first since his election as president in 2016, Aoun will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on bilateral relations, the Syrian refugee crisis and the stalled Russian initiative aiming to secure the return of displaced Syrians in Lebanon to their country, the official source said. The source added the offshore oil and gas issue would be discussed during the meeting. Russian company Novatek is part of a consortium that includes France’s Total and Italy’s Eni and is expected to begin exploring Lebanon’s potential offshore oil and gas reserves later this year. Meanwhile, Aoun, speaking to visitors at Baabda Palace, criticized the international community’s insistence on a political solution to the 8-year-old conflict in Syria before the return of Syrian refugees to their home country. “Lebanon is working with international powers to secure the safe return of displaced Syrians to stable and safe Syrian areas. Lebanon is encountering the positions of some states that give priority to a political solution to the Syrian crisis over the refugees’ return,” Aoun told members of the European Parliament who belong to the Alliance for Peace and Freedom, a far-right pan-European party. “We will not accept this because we have hosted the displaced [Syrians] for humanitarian reasons as a result of the fighting that was raging in Syria. But the fighting has stopped today almost completely, while the repercussions of the Syrian displacement have continued for eight years at various security, socio-economic and health levels,” he added. Aoun said any aid stemming from funds pledged to refugees should not be made available to them while they remain in their host countries. He stressed the aid should instead be distributed to them only upon their return to Syria. Aoun’s remarks came a day after international donors at the three-day Brussels III conference pledged about $7 billion in aid for refugees who have fled the war-ravaged country. Hariri, who represented Lebanon at the conference, had appealed to the international community for about $2.6 billion in funding for Lebanon, though how much of the $7 billion the country will receive has not yet been made clear. However, the Brussels III Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region drew fire from Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. Bassil, the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, said conferences that raise money by way of responding to the Syrian refugee crisis “fund the stay of the refugees” in host countries instead of their return to Syria. “Big countries are pressuring to prevent the refugees’ return to their country. It is not a coincidence that I am here today and not at the Brussels Conference, because these conferences fund the stay of the refugees where they are, while we want their return to be funded,” Bassil told FPM supporters at a dinner in Furn al-Shubbak Thursday night. One of the central points of contention internally surrounding the refugee returns has been whether Lebanon should fully normalize ties with the regime in Syria to carry them out. Bassil defended contacts with Syria over the refugees’ return. “Those who want the [refugees’] return, let them stop the lie of ‘normalization with Syria’ because [diplomatic] relations already exist and are not severed with Syria and they do not need to be normalized,” he said.