Lebanon PM tells Iran to stop treating country as 'bargaining chip'

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Friday urged Iran to stop treating his country, where Israel and the Tehran-backed Hizbollah are at war, as a "bargaining chip" in its negotiations with Washington on the Middle East conflict.

"If I may address a word to Iran, it is this: have mercy on our south, stop treating it and its people as merely a bargaining chip to improve the terms of your negotiations," Salam told a press conference for a UN aid appeal for Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun urged Iran not to interfere in his country in a video interview published on Friday by CNN, also telling Hizbollah that diplomacy was the only solution to the conflict with Israel.

President Joseph Aoun meets with French special envoy to Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian in Beirut. AP

"It's not your country, it's our country... It's not your job to interfere into our country," Aoun told Iran in the interview, adding that "they are using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiation with the United States. It's unacceptable." "Hizbollah must understand that (there is) no other way but to sit and talk, no other way to solve this problem and to save what's left except through negotiation and diplomacy," he added.

Agence France-Presse