Huge Differences with Syria, Dialogue with Damascus Not at Lebanon”s Expense
U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffery Feltman said Thursday that there are huge differences with Syria and stressed that talks with Damascus will not come at the expense of Lebanon.
Talks with Syrian officials "will not be at the expense of a third country …. As Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton stressed two weeks ago in Beirut the United States will not sacrifice the interests of Lebanon" in Obama administration”s efforts to improve ties with Damascus, Feltman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing.
He described his talks with Syrian officials in March and May as tough, saying the U.S. has deep differences with Damascus. But Washington is looking forward for cooperation in areas that Syria claims to have common interests with the U.S. such as Iraq.
As for Tehran, the U.S. administration”s chief envoy for the region said that Iran”s nuclear program and its increased regional influence have replaced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main concern of governments in the Middle East.
"When you traveled around the (Middle East) five, six, seven years ago, almost everywhere you went, the first thing that came up was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Feltman told the committee. "When you travel around today, what you are going to hear about is Iran."
Even though concerns about Iran are raised by officials in the region before anything else, "we want to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to remove one of the tools that Iran uses to distract the region from what Iran is doing," Feltman said.
He called Iran a "spoiler" in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace through its support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Lebanon”s Hizbullah.
“We want to try to pursue some opportunities here, given the shared international and regional concern about Iranian practices," he said.