The United States pledged support for Lebanon on Wednesday ahead of an international aid summit to help it launch reforms. Speaking in Beirut days before a U.N. inquiry into the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri presents its findings, senior U.S. diplomat David Welch said Lebanon now had an opportunity for economic and political reforms. "I would like to express on behalf of the United States and the American administration our strongest support for this country under the new leadership of this new government," said Welch, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, after meeting Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh. "There is an enormous opportunity now before Lebanon to restore dignity and hope for its people and to protect its sovereignty as it faces the future and to launch a new programme of political and economic reform that would make this one of the strongest countries in the Middle East." Welch told reporters he was following up a meeting in New York last month in which the so-called core group on Lebanon -- the United States and leading European and Arab nations -- pledged to hold an aid conference for the country this year, Reuters reported.
