US Warns Syria: "Don't Invade North Lebanon!"

Stern US warning to Syria not to invade Northern Lebanon
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

2 Oct.: Washington accompanied this warning to Damascus, DEBKAfile has learned, with its first explicit threat of military intervention to aid Lebanon should Syria go through with its planned incursion of the North.

DEBKAfile first revealed the concentration of 10,000 Syrian troops on the Lebanese border on Sept. 20 and again on Sept. 27.

The warning, according to our sources, was delivered on Sept. 28 by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to the Syrian foreign minister Walid Mualem whom she invited for an urgent meeting in New York. The day after they met, Mualem was handed a second warning by undersecretary of state David Welch, who specified precisely which Syrian movements the US government would deem crossing the Lebanese border.