{"id":31471,"date":"2019-02-02T02:22:58","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T02:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31471"},"modified":"2019-02-02T02:22:58","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T02:22:58","slug":"us-warns-lebanons-hezbollah-not-to-funnel-ministrys-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31471","title":{"rendered":"US warns Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah not to funnel ministry\u2019s money"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nBEIRUT: A senior US official warned Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah not to exploit its newly gained clout in the new Lebanese Cabinet and channel funds from a ministry it controls to institutions affiliated with the militant group.
The remarks by Marshall Billingslea, the US Treasury\u2019s assistant secretary on terror financing, came as Lebanese political factions agreed late Thursday to form a new government, breaking a nine-month deadlock that had deepened Lebanon\u2019s economic woes.
The warning underscores the delicate balance that Prime Minister Saad Hariri must strike in a national unity government in which the Iran-backed group has three seats, including the Health Ministry, which has one of the country\u2019s largest budgets.
Hariri, who hails from the country\u2019s leading Sunni political party, reportedly had warned against Hezbollah holding the Health Ministry amid concerns his new government could face Western sanctions.
Billingslea spoke to local journalists at the US Embassy in Beirut at the end of a two-day visit during which he met with Lebanon\u2019s president, prime minister, central bank governor and other officials.
\u201cIf we see that Hezbollah exploits, and they will exploit whatever ministry they are given, to funnel money and other terrorist agendas, then we have significant problems with that,\u201d Billingslea was quoted as saying by the English-language Daily Star newspaper on Friday. He declined to elaborate what the US Treasury would do in that case.
The United States has labelled Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
The new health minister, Jamil Jabbak, is not a member of Hezbollah but is believed to be close to the group\u2019s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and was his personal physician at one point.
The 30-seat government has seen an increase in the number of ministries affiliated with Hezbollah, which is under tightening sanctions from the US
The group has been affected recently by the US sanctions as well as those imposed on its main baker Iran.
\u201cWe applied sanctions on Iran because they refuse to stop their terrorism and refuse to stop their missile launchers and funneling of their activities abroad,\u201d the Daily Star also quoted Billingslea as saying. \u201cAnd as a result of that, we are actually seeing that Hezbollah here is not getting the paychecks they once enjoyed from the Iranians.\u201d
Hariri and Hezbollah are political rivals. Hezbollah threw its weight behind Syrian President Bashar Assad\u2019s forces in the civil war that broke out in the neighboring country in 2011, sending its militiamen to fight alongside Syrian government troops, while Hariri and his political allies have criticized the group\u2019s intervention, supporting at times the opposition fighting against Assad.
The new Cabinet was agreed on as Lebanon is dealing with soaring public debt of $84 billion, or 150 percent of the gross domestic product, and unemployment believed to be around 36 percent. Lebanon\u2019s infrastructure is also reeling under the weight of a growing number of Syrian refugees: more than 1 million in a country of just over 4 million.
The government is expected to enact reforms that would allow it to unlock around $11 billion in soft loans and grants pledged by international donors at a conference in Paris last year.
Elisa Parisi-Capone, vice president and senior analyst at Moody\u2019s Investors Service, said it expects the new government to implement measures to receive the investment package committed to by international donors last year.
\u201cHowever, in the context of very weak growth, fiscal consolidation will remain very challenging for the government,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BEIRUT: A senior US official warned Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah not to exploit its newly gained clout in the new Lebanese Cabinet and channel funds from a ministry it controls to institutions affiliated with the militant group.The remarks by Marshall Billingslea, the US Treasury\u2019s assistant secretary on terror financing, came as Lebanese political factions agreed late Thursday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}