Farrakhan in Lebanon to Combat Pro-Israel Lobby

July 4, 2002

BEIRUT, Lebanon, (Reuters) -- Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan met Lebanon's president on Thursday on a regional tour the controversial black activist hopes will ease violence in the Middle East and help counter Israeli influence on U.S. policy.

Farrakhan, who once called Judaism a "gutter religion," has been blasted as an anti-Semite in the United States and was barred from Britain in 1986 because the government said he expressed racist views.

"Mr Farrakhan focused on what he does in the United States, his actions to confront the influence of the Zionist lobby and to campaign for an end to the violence and a just peace," Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said in a statement.

"He seeks...to create a political force including Christians and Muslims from all groups and ethnicities to act as a force pressuring the U.S. administration."

It added that Farrakhan praised Lebanon over the end of Israel's 1978-2000 occupation of south Lebanon, where Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas waged a war of attrition that led the Jewish state to withdraw.

In April Farrakhan said his trip, which included a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, would be an attempt to broker peace between Palestinians and Israelis and counter what he says is pro-Israeli bias in Washington's Middle East policy.

He has led the Chicago-based African-American Muslim group since the late 1970s. Farrakhan stirred controversy in 2000, when he suggested Jewish vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman was more loyal to Israel than the United States.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/07/04/lebanon.farrakhan.reut/index.html