US to request quick military aid for Lebanon

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Wednesday it wants to speed up U.S. aid for Lebanon's army because of the recent wave of sectarian fighting.

The administration plans to ask Congress to quickly approve military spending that was already in the works. State Department spokesman Tom Casey would not say how much money the administration is seeking. He also would not say what the money would buy, but previous military grants have been used for ammunition, armor and the like.

"I know that there are a number of things in the pipeline for them," Casey said. "We'll be trying to move some of those things through the pipeline in an expedited fashion."

At the Pentagon, a senior military official said Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the acting commander of U.S. Central Command, was in Beirut on Wednesday for a brief visit with Lebanese government officials. The official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity, said Dempsey spent only a few hours there and that his visit was designed to demonstrate U.S. commitment to Lebanon.

President Bush telegraphed the aid request in interviews ahead of his current Mideast trip. He said he wants to beef up the Lebanese army, but he also expressed disappointment in the army's recent performance.

"The Lebanese armed force is pretty good," Bush told Al-Arabiya television on Monday. "They're not great yet, but they're pretty good. And we want to make them better so that they can respond."

He said the United States has "probably got some more work to do" to get the army what it needs.

"I'm not satisfied with the army, but I'm satisfied that, given their equipment, they've done a good job," Bush said. "And the question then is, Can we help them get better equipment and better training in the short run? In other words, we want it to be better than today."

The army did not intervene as Hezbollah, considered a terrorist group by the U.S., overran Beirut neighborhoods last week. The Lebanese military feared that if it got involved in the fighting, it could split along sectarian lines as happened in the civil war.

In one instance, the army stood aside as Shiite militiamen burned the building of the newspaper of their main Sunni rival — acting only to evacuate people and then allow firefighters later to put out the blaze.

On Tuesday, the army said it was ready to use force to end the fighting between supporters of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition.

No fighting was reported throughout Lebanon on Wednesday, but tensions lingered after Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah demonstrated its military power last week. It was the worst internal fighting since the end of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.

A high-powered Arab League delegation mediated between Lebanese factions to try to end street confrontations that have killed at least 54 people.

The United States sped up military aid once before, in response to the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon. The agreement that ended fighting was supposed to give the Lebanese army a full mandate over the country, including in places where Hezbollah held de facto control for years.

The administration has spent about $1.3 billion in the past two years trying to prop up Saniora's government, including about $400 million pledged in military aid.

A U.S. defense official stressed that there is no planned increase in naval presence or plan to raise the U.S. profile in the region at this time.

An additional vessel — the USS Mount Whitney communications ship — moved through the Mediterranean toward Lebanon Wednesday, but only to help with logistics for the helicopters resupplying the U.S. Embassy and for communications between the ships already in the area, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak about the issue on the record.

The helicopters used in the mission came off the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, which was already in the Mediterranean region.

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Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

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