Feltman: Lebanese have to support Assad’s fall

Lebanon has a moral obligation to support the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and should use upcoming elections to reject “the apologists of Assad’s butchery,” a senior US official said. In strongly worded remarks, Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, paid tribute to Lebanese who took to the streets after former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005. Feltman, who was US ambassador in Beirut during that period, said supporters of Lebanon had a “moral as well as political obligation” to support Syrians fighting to topple Assad. “No one outside of Syria understands the brutality of Bashar Assad better than the Lebanese. No one outside of Syria has more of a stake in the outcome than the Lebanese,” Feltman told a Lebanese American reception late Monday. The US official said the Cedar Revolution of 2005 had not yet achieved a Lebanon “free of Assad’s manipulation” and of Iranian influence and urged Lebanese to look ahead to parliamentary elections due next year. “I hope those Lebanese who are here with us today, along with millions of others back home in Lebanon, will again show the world how they can transcend fear – in order to use those 2013 legislative elections to defeat the remnants of the Syrian occupation and reject the apologists of Assad’s butchery,” he said.