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BEIRUT: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in Beirut on Wednesday on a controversial visit that will take him to the doorstep of arch-foe Israel in a joint show of force with his ally Hezbollah.
His two-day official trip has sparked criticism among members of Lebanon’s pro-Western parliamentary majority as well as in the United States and Israel, which have sought to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme.
Hezbollah has urged its supporters to turn out en masse to greet the hardline Iranian leader early on Wednesday, with banners of Ahmadinejad and Iranian flags lining the highway leading to the airport south of Beirut.
Giant pictures of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah, also lined the roads in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the capital’s southern suburbs.
Several main streets in Beirut were cordoned off on the eve of the visit, set to take place under tight security.
Ahmadinejad’s first visit since his election in 2005 will highlight the clout Iran wields in Lebanon through Hezbollah, considered Tehran’s proxy and by far the most powerful military and political force in the small Mediterranean country.
The president’s trip comes at a sensitive time in politically turbulent Lebanon.
Hezbollah is locked in a standoff with Prime Minister Saad Hariri over unconfirmed reports that a UN-backed tribunal is set to indict members of the militant group over the 2005 assassination of Hariri’s father, ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.
Tensions over the tribunal have grown steadily in recent weeks, raising fears of renewed sectarian violence and the collapse of Lebanon’s hard-fought national unity government. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Saad Hariri and parliament speaker Nabih Berri.
He will also meet Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who has lived in hiding since his party’s devastating 2006 war with Israel.
Nasrallah is expected to appear alongside Ahmadinejad at a rally in Beirut but it is not known whether he will do so in person or via video link.
The highlight of the trip, however, comes on Thursday when Ahmadinejad will be just a few kilometers (miles) away from the Israeli border as he tours southern Lebanese villages destroyed during the 2006 conflict. He is set to stop in Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah bastion devastated during the war, and in Qana, targeted in 1996 and again in 2006 by deadly Israeli air strikes.
Iran has been a major donor in the reconstruction of southern Lebanon following the month-long 2006 war, and Ahmadinejad is set to receive a hero’s welcome in the area.
The United States and Israel have expressed concern over the visit saying it could undermine regional stability.
Hezbollah’s political opponents in Lebanon have denounced the visit as a bid by Tehran to portray Lebanon as “an Iranian base on the Mediterranean.”
Ahmadinejad will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and a delegation of business leaders. He is expected to sign bilateral agreements in the energy and water sectors.
Official banquets organised in his honour will not include Western ambassadors to avoid any walkouts should Ahmadinejad launch one of his trademark tirades against Israel.
The Iranian leader has sparked international outrage by repeatedly casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust and predicting the destruction of Israel. — AFP
