US says will be 'substantial' donor to Lebanon

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to make an announcement at the conference in Paris, where donors such as France and Saudi Arabia are also expected to give aid that could yield billions of dollars for Lebanon.

"It will be substantial," Said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, when asked how much Washington would give to help rescue the debt-laden country's finances and to recover from last year's war between Israel and Hizbullah guerrillas.

McCormack declined to provide figures and another senior official also said he did not want to "Take Secretary Rice's thunder" at Thursday's conference.

"The United States will have a substantial and leadership position on this. We expect the support from the international community will be very good," said a senior Bush administration official, who spoke on condition he was not named.

Any new aid will be on top of about USD900 million that donors pledged last August for postwar reconstruction in Lebanon, as well as USD1.5 billion deposited with Lebanon's central bank by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to keep the Lebanese pound stable.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has not released any target for what the conference will raise. In November, a Lebanese minister said Lebanon hoped to receive over USD4 billion and a Lebanese economist has cited a figure of USD7 billion.

Opposition tactics 

US officials, including McCormack, accused the opposition in Lebanon of trying to create false expectations ahead of the Paris meeting and of giving inflated numbers so that it would appear that Siniora had failed in his bid to raise funds.

In addition, he said a strike was planned for Tuesday in Lebanon as well as other demonstrations.

"This is a tactic that they are using to try and distract people from the fact that they themselves have not met any of the promises they made to quote/unquote, 'rebuild' the south of Lebanon," he added of the Hizbullah opposition.

The senior Bush administration official said an opposition suggestion that the conference would raise USD7 billion to USD9 billion was incorrect.

"Everyone is out there trying to create expectations -- to cause them to be exceeded or cause them to fail. Neither of those would be right," said the official.

He said "It would be responsible" for some US aid to be tied to economic reforms by Lebanon. While acknowledging Lebanon had not made promised reforms in the past he suggested there were reasons to believe it would do so this time.

The United States wants to support Siniora's government both politically and militarily and earlier this month, Washington delivered the first shipment of military vehicles to Lebanon as part of a USD40 million military package.

The State Department said the White House would ask Congress for more funds for military support in its next budget.

Last year, after the Lebanon war, the United States promised Lebanon about USD250 million in humanitarian aid and about half of that has been delivered.