Syria Calls for Security Cooperation with Lebanon

TEHRAN (FNA)- Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem called for security cooperation with neighboring Lebanon to boost the border area in combating arms smuggling.

There was smuggling both to and from Lebanon and Syria’s frontier with Lebanon cannot be controlled without security collaboration with Beirut, Muallem was quoted by the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper as saying on Wednesday.

“The question of the border between Syria and Lebanon needs two actions: delineation (of border) and Syrian-Lebanese security cooperation,” Xinhua quoted Muallem as saying.

Muallem also restated Damascus’ rejection that Syria is the main transit route for weapons to Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah.

A UN Security Council resolution, which put to an end the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, appealed to Beirut to tighten border check to contain arms smuggling.

During Lebanese President Michel Suleiman’s visit to Syria in August, the two neighboring countries announced that they agreed to normalize bilateral ties and demarcate their borders.

Syria and Lebanon have not established diplomatic relations since their independence from the French colonial rule in the 1940s.