Ahmadinejad Plans Visit to Israel's Border
The Guardian reports:
Lebanon looks set to allow the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to make a highly controversial visit to its border with Israel next week.
The US has been leading diplomatic efforts to persuade the Beirut government that Ahmadinejad's presence in strongholds of the Shia movement Hezbollah in south Lebanon will pose a security risk that could provoke serious violence. But the signs are that the trip will go ahead, diplomats said today.
According to some reports Ahmadinejad will symbolically throw stones across the border fence into Israel, which he regularly attacks as an illegitimate entity, as well as questioning the truth of the Nazi Holocaust. Israel is also concerned by Iran's nuclear energy programme, which it claims is intended to produce nuclear weapons which would challenge its own undeclared atomic arsenal.
The reported two-day itinerary for Ahmadinejad's first state visit to Lebanon includes Qana, where he is to lay a wreath on the graves of Lebanese killed by Israeli forces. Another likely stop is Bint Jbeil, the scene of heavy fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in the 2006 war.
Posters welcoming Ahmadinejad in Arabic and Persian have already appeared in the area amid reports that the Iranian leader, with a business delegation in tow, will bring investment, financing for oil exploration and a controversial offer to sell weapons to the Lebanese army.
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