Lebanese army chief meets King Abdullah on rare visit to US ally Jordan

US is urging the Lebanese army to take a bigger role once the Hezbollah-Israel war ends

Gen Joseph Aoun, commander of the Lebanese armed forces, met Jordan's King Abdullah II to discuss regional challenges amid the continuing Hezbollah-Israel conflict. Reuters

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Lebanese military chief Gen Joseph Aoun met King Abdullah II on a rare weekend visit to US ally Jordan, as the war between Israel and Hezbollah rages.

Gen Aoun discussed with the Jordan's monarch “the situation of the region under the shadow of the continued Israeli aggression on Lebanon and the situation of the [Lebanese] military establishment, and the challenges the military is facing”, the official Lebanese news agency NNA reported late on Sunday.

The visit comes after US envoy Amos Hochstein said last week that the US was working on arrangements to end the Hezbollah-Israel war based on UN resolution 1701, which ended the war between the two enemies back in 2006. It calls for southern Lebanon to be free of armed groups except for the Lebanese army, and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon Unifil, meaning that Hezbollah cannot be present in the area.

Brig Gen Youssef Al Huneiti, Chief of Staff of the Jordanian army, invited Gen Aoun to visit Jordan. The two men met on Sunday and discussed “ways to support the army in the current stage”, the agency said. King Abdullah "affirmed the importance of the army as a guarantee of the security and stability in Lebanon", Lebanese media reported.

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Lebanon, which is facing one of the worst economic crisis in the region, is under pressure from Israel to reign in Hezbollah's influence. However, there is no domestic group, including its military, willing or capable of taking on the powerful Iran- backed group, and the only party that kept its arms after the civil war from 1975 to 1990.

Arab media has reported that Mr Hochstein is also pushing for a robust Lebanese army role, when the current war ends, to make sure Hezbollah is kept away from southern Lebanon, the stronghold of the group. However, few in the region believe this would be possible.

Hezbollah is widely believed to have loyalists among the top echelons of the Lebanese army, although Gen Aoun's name is being circulated as a possible western-backed replacement to fill the long vacant presidency position in Lebanon which must go to a Maronite Christian under a sectarian power-sharing system. The crisis underlines the deep political dysfunction that has compounded a four-year-long financial crisis in the country.

Jordan often serves as a safe territory for third party meetings involving the US, but there were no immediate indications on whether Gen Aoun met anyone other than Jordanian officials during his visit.

The kingdom has denounced Israeli attacks on Lebanon. It also apposes the spread of Hezbollah and other militias sponsored by Iran in the region. Jordanian officials have also accused pro-Iranian militias operating in Syria of links to a cross border, multibillion-dollar a year narcotics trade into the kingdom.

The Jordanian army has played a main role in intercepting two Iranian barrages of missiles on Israel, in April and on October 1.