Lebanon's prime minister on Thursday called on world donors to help his country recover after Israeli attacks wiped out "15 years of postwar development".
Some 60 governments and aid organizations were meeting in Stockholm hoping to raise $500 million to help Lebanon rebuild roads, bridges and homes left shattered by the war. According to the AP, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora told delegates that the direct damage of the conflict was in the "billions of dollars" while the indirect cost including lost tourism and industry revenue would cost billions more.
"Moreover, Lebanon's well-known achievements in 15 years of postwar development have been wiped out in a matter of days by Israel's deadly war machine," Saniora said.
He said reconstruction efforts would be "severely undermined" if Israel doesn't lift its sea, air and land blockade of Lebanon.
In his speech, Saniora dismissed a suggestion that postwar aid would be funneled to Hizbullah as a "fallacy." "It will not have any intermediary in the way of any group," he said of aid being pledged at the conference. "It will be spent according to the wishes first of all of the donors."
In a report to the conference, the Lebanese government projected that early recovery efforts would cost about $540 million.
Conference host Jan Eliasson, Sweden's foreign minister, dismissed suggestions that the aid money would trickle down to Hizbullah and strengthen the group's position in southern Lebanon. "I don't accept that argument," Eliasson told reporters before the meeting. "This conference aims at strengthening the central government of Lebanon and in that government Hizbullah is only a minor part."
