Edgar Allen Poe

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria has promised to use all of its influence on Hezbollah in a bid to bring an end to the fighting in neighboring Lebanon, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said.

ADVERTISEMENT

"The Syrian authorities are going to exercise all their influence over Hezbollah and over the various actors" in the conflict, Moratinos said after meeting with President Bashar al-Assad and other senior officials.

However, he told reporters, Syrian leaders want a "change in the circumstances and the political-military context in which Lebanon lives."

The conflict was sparked on July 12 when Israel retaliated massively after the Shiite movement's guerrillas carried out a deadly raid on an Israeli border post and seized two soldiers.

Syria and Iran are accused by the West of financing and arming Hezbollah, but Damascus claims it provides the group only with moral support.

Moratinos, a former EU Middle East envoy who had traveled to Beirut and Damascus to press efforts by Brussels to end the fighting, said his visit to Syria had achieved its objectives.

He had asked Syria "to be constructive in this very delicate situation we are facing, and I received a positive answer from the Syrian authorities.

"Syria wants to be part of the solution. Syria doesn't want to be part of the problem."

In particular, he said he and the Syrians had agreed a common position on a French proposal calling for an immediate ceasefire and the subsequent deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

He did not elaborate.

After talks Wednesday night with his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Muallem, Moratinos said "we have to succeed in an immediate ceasefire."

Speaking in