BEIRUT — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice laid a wreath and bowed her head yesterday at the flower-laden tomb of a Lebanese politician whose assassination swelled a democratic tide in this volatile country.
Miss Rice made the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri the symbolic focus of her surprise visit to Beirut, the first since former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in 2003. In an unusual itinerary for the United States’ chief diplomat, Miss Rice visited the gravesite and the Hariri family compound before her talks with government leaders.
With her focus on Mr. Hariri, Miss Rice highlighted the Bush administration’s second-term push for expanded democracy in the Middle East, a region where family dynasties and single-party rule have been the norm.
Violence also has wracked the region, a point underscored when just hours after Miss Rice left Beirut a bomb exploded on a narrow city street crowded with bars and restaurants. It was unclear whether there was any connection to her visit.
Miss Rice met officials from the new government that has emerged from a season of political change following February’s car-bomb assassination of Mr. Hariri, an anti-Syrian politician whose likeness appears everywhere on posters and banners in Beirut. Syria withdrew some 14,000 troops from Lebanon in April under international pressure, ending three decades of military and political domination over its much-smaller neighbor.
“The new Lebanon is one that is democratic,” Miss Rice said. “The new Lebanon is one that should be free of foreign influence. It is a Lebanon in which Lebanese should make decisions for the Lebanese.”
The Bush administration often cites the changes in Lebanon as a democratic breeze in the region. Anti-Syrian candidates won election in June, and a new Cabinet was announced in Beirut this week. That gave Miss Rice an opening to visit and congratulate the new leadership, although she also was obligated to meet with the current pro-Syrian president of Lebanon, who will keep his job for two years in the new government.
Miss Rice met with Mr. Hariri’s son and political successor, Saad Hariri, and her motorcade also slowed at the seaside site of the bombing that killed Mr. Hariri.
Huge street protests followed Mr. Hariri’s slaying, along with a rising chorus of demands for Syria to leave.
Already on poor terms with Damascus, the United States withdrew its ambassador after the killing and said Syria bore responsibility for destabilizing Lebanon. Washington did not blame Syria directly for the slaying, but anti-Syrian politicians make that charge. Syria denies it.
“We would like to see the day when there are good neighborly relations between Syria and Lebanon based on mutual respect and equality,” Miss Rice said in a joint press conference with Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Fuad Saniora.
“But good neighbors don’t close their borders to their neighbors,” she said of tightened Syrian security measures that have delayed or stranded thousands of Lebanese vehicles at the two countries’ border.
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