Lebanon’s militant Shia Hezbollah today accused the United States of escalating tensions in the Middle East by dispatching warships to patrol the Lebanese coastline.

“We are facing an American threat against Lebanon,” said Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah MP. “It is clear this threat and intimidation will not affect us.”

His comments came a day after US officials confirmed that the USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer, has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean as a show of support for the troubled Western-backed Lebanese Government.

The USS Cole is accompanied by two refuelling ships. But it could soon be joined by the US Navy’s Nassau battle group, consisting of six ships including amphibious troop carriers, which is scheduled to sail to the eastern Mediterranean soon.

“This is an area that is important to us, the eastern Med,” said Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He played down the significance of the USS Cole’s deployment, but added: “it does signal that we’re engaged, we’re going to be in the vicinity, and that’s a very, very important part of the world.”

The USS Cole was badly damaged in 2000 in an al-Qaeda suicide attack in Yemen which left 17 American servicemen dead. During the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militants disabled an Israel warship with a small cruise missile.

The US Navy deployment off the Lebanese coastline is seen as a sign of frustration with the political impasse between the government in Beirut and the pro-Syrian opposition, led by Hezbollah. The government and its supporters accuse Syria of using its Lebanese allies to try and regain its former hegemony over Lebanon. Hezbollah charges that the government has adopted a US agenda of seeking the militant group‘s disarmament and weakening Syria.

Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister, said that US officials had not informed him of the deployment of the USS Cole, adding that it would remain outside Lebanese territorial waters. "The Lebanese Navy and [United Nations] naval forces, which are helping Lebanese secure its maritime borders, are the only ones in Lebanese territorial waters," he said.

Marwan Hamade, Minister of Telecommunications, told The Times: “It is obvious that the permanent escalation by Iran and Syria and subsequently by Hezbollah was going to produce this kind of reaction from the Americans. They have put Lebanon in the eye of the cyclone.”

Lebanese newspapers saw the naval movements as a harbinger of more trouble and possible war. “The USS Cole is heading to Lebanon: The worst is looming,” ran a headline in the Saudi-owned Ash-Sharq al-Awsat.

“American repeats its 1982 adventure,” headlined the pro-opposition daily Al-Akhbar, referring to the deployment of US navy ships and Marines in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

The crisis in Lebanon is threatening the success of the annual summit of Arab heads of state in Damascus later this month. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a key ally of the Lebanese Government, has signalled that he will not attend, and other Arab leaders may follow suit. An Arab boycott of the prestigious event would embarrass Damascus and worsen its already brittle ties with its neighbours.

Adding to the volatile mix are the repercussions of the assassination two weeks ago of Imad Mughniyah, a veteran Hezbollah commander, who died in a car bomb blast in Damascus. Hezbollah blamed Israel and has vowed revenge, giviing warning of an “open war” against the Jewish state.

Israel has reinforced its troops along its northern border with Lebanon and deployed Patriot anti-missile batteries in Haifa, Israel’s second largest city 25 miles south of the Lebanese border.

In south Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters are on full alert amid heightened expectation of another war with Israel.

A local Hezbollah unit commander, who fought Israeli troops in the summer war of 2006, told The Times: “We are ready for another war and it will come.”

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