Middle East
Lebanon also has bilateral trade agreements with several Arab states and is in the process of accession to the World Trade Organization. Lebanon traditionally enjoys warm relations with other pro-Western Arab states. At various times, however, it has seen tension with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, the Palestinians, and Libya. In March 2002, in honor of the expulsion of Israeli troops from the South of the country, the Arab League met in Lebanon for the first time since 1967. Lebanon also is a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Hezbollah maintains a close relationship with Iran, largely centered on Shi'a Muslim links and animosity towards Israel.
Read more about this topic: Foreign Relations Of Lebanon
Famous quotes containing the words middle east, middle and/or east:
“The blood of Abraham, God’s father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian, and too much of it has been spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God—an anguished cry for peace.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)