WORLD : Move Made to Cut Aoun’s Funds
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BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Muslim prime minister moved to block funds reaching defiant Christian Gen. Michel Aoun, asking France and the United States today to help prevent him from getting cash to pay his 15,000 soldiers.
Prime Minister Salim Hoss wrote to France’s foreign affairs minister for help in efforts by Lebanon’s Syrian-backed government to retrieve $15 million said by a French newspaper to be held in Aoun’s name in Paris.
Besides the letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Roland Dumas, Hoss asked U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III to back Lebanon in recovering any money held by Aoun in any American bank.
Political sources said Hoss was trying to put pressure on Aoun to force him to submit to the government of Lebanon’s internationally recognized president, Elias Hrawi.
Aoun controls the Christian enclave and the presidential palace inside it. The general said the money in a Paris bank was given by Lebanese residents abroad.
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