Saudi urges world to help Lebanon

Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal held a meeting in the Red Sea city of Jeddah Tuesday with heads of diplomatic missions during which he "urged the international community to provide utmost levels of aid to Lebanon," the statement said.

He called for assistance "at the economic, political, diplomatic and military levels to ease the human suffering of the Lebanese people, rebuild (Lebanon) ... achieve stability, and extend its government's sovereignty over its entire territory," according to the statement received by AFP.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which has provided a 1.5-billion-dollar aid package for Lebanon, will present to the diplomatic missions a list of the country's needs in terms of rebuilding its infrastructure and rehabilitating its armed forces, the statement added.

The Saudi aid package for Lebanon, the biggest from a single country so far, consists of a one-billion-dollar deposit with the central bank designed to shore up the Lebanese currency and a grant of 500 million dollars.

Saud's meeting with foreign diplomats came ahead of a conference in Stockholm Thursday of foreign and aid ministers from more than 40 countries that will seek to raise 500 million dollars (392 million euros) for Lebanon's acute humanitarian and reconstruction needs following the Israeli onslaught.

Saudi Arabia will "most probably" be represented at the conference by Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf, an official source said.

Israel launched a massive offensive against Lebanon on July 12 after the Shiite militant Hezbollah movement abducted two Israeli soldiers in a bid to swap them with Lebanese held by the Jewish state.

A shaky ceasefire that went into effect on August 14 ended the conflict, which killed at least 1,287 people in Lebanon, nearly all of them civilians, as well as 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is touring the Middle East in a bid to shore up the truce, is due in Jeddah Monday for talks with King Abdullah and other Saudi leaders.

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