Hezbollah slams new UN bid to disarm it

Hezbollah has taken a swipe at a recent UN briefing on the outdated Resolution 1559, describing the move as part of a hostile effort against the Lebanese resistance movement.

The reaction came after the UN’s Special Representative for the Implementation of Resolution 1559, Terje Roed-Larsen, delivered a report on the document before the Security Council in a closed door session on Friday, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Resolution 1559 was adopted by the Security Council in 2004, months before the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri. It was co-sponsored by the US and France under Presidents George W. Bush and Jack Chirac during a period of intense animosity between the West and Syria.

In addition to demanding the disarmament of Hezbollah, the resolution also called for demarcating the border between Syria and Lebanon and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which was carried out early in 2005.

The Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah slammed the briefing as unjust and biased, describing Roed-Larsen as an “international official servant in the Zionist media system that reflects the full participation of hostility towards the Resistance, Lebanon, Arabs and all just causes in the world.”

“The Secretary General remains convinced that the disarmament of the armed groups in Lebanon, in particular Hezbollah, can best be achieved by a Lebanese-led political process,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq said.

Roed-Larsen has delivered more than a dozen such reports to the Security Council, although 1559 was rendered obsolete by Resolution 1701, which was drafted with the intent to resolve the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, triggered by a major Israeli attack against the Lebanese soil with the announced objective of taking out the Hezbollah resistance.

Roed-Larson’s efforts to deliver briefings on an outdated resolution have raised serious questions among observers.

“The Security Council members want him to remain. The Secretary General wants him to remain. The major player, the United States, wants of course this 1559 to stay on in order to bring pressure on the resistance of Lebanon. They want to disarm the Hezbollah and they want pressure so they use these occasions in order to force such disarmaments,” Nizar Abboud of Lebanese daily al-Akhbar said.

Abboud adds that the recent events across the Arab world make Roed-Larsen’s work as the special envoy for Lebanon even more redundant.

Roed-Larsen has also labeled Lebanon as a dangerous place, where he reportedly does not visit — which brings into question the sources of the information comprising his biannual reports to the Security Council.