CHEERING crowds greeted Iran's President Mohammad Khatami in Beirut on Monday as he began a historic visit.
As Khatami's convoy entered downtown Beirut, tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims whistled, cheered and waved flags. Women threw rose petals as other well-wishers held aloft pictures of the reformist Iranian president. At one point, the black-turbaned Khatami stopped his limousine and walked among the crowd, smiling broadly and waving.
Khatami is the first Iranian leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution to visit Lebanon, which together with Syria, came under US pressure last week to secure Hizbullah's withdrawal from a border zone where it has clashed with Israeli troops. Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri and a Hizbullah delegation met Khatami at the airport.
Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hizbullah said on Tuesday after a meeting with Khatami that he had the backing of the Iranian President, despite US demands that Hizbullah's foreign backers rein the group in. " The position is one of solidarity between the Islamic Republic, Syria, Lebanon, the resistance, the Palestinian people and all the honourable people of the Muslim community, in the face of a common threat," he said.
Earlier, Khatami has criticised Washington, which has overthrown governments in Iran's neighbours, Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now squeezing Tehran over its nuclear programme. " The occupation of Iraq was a mistake," Khatami wrote in a column in Lebanon's Arabic-language As-Safir daily. " It would be a bigger mistake for the attacking forces to impose an immoral and strange regime on the these people. Let the American people be aware that these policies of the bosses in Washington will come back to harm them in the long run."
