CONDOLEEZZA RICE was not the most welcome of guests yesterday, despite her flamboyant exchange of kisses with the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Fouad Siniora, during her fleeting visit to Beirut.

Her surprise appearance was, her officials insisted, her idea and was intended as a “public show of support for a valued ally” — though her security detail ensured that the US Secretary of State avoided the sight of demonstrators making it clear what they thought of America’s idea of how to treat a supposed friend.

A year ago this was President Bush’s favourite city in a troubled region. He fêted thousands of flag-waving students who poured into the main square of Beirut in what headline writers called “The Cedar revolution”, forcing Syrian troops to leave and ushering in a reform-minded, pro-Western Government at the polls.

This was the model that Mr Bush encouraged others in the area to follow. That sense of optimism and goodwill has been destroyed by the miseries of the past fortnight. The fragile and fractious coalition Government in Lebanon feels that it has been emasculated by Washington.

A senior government figure told The Times last night: “We have been let down and betrayed.”

The Siniora administration has been helpless as the White House stood by while Israel wrecked Lebanon’s infrastructure and, at the last count, killed 381, the vast majority of them civilians.

Israeli jets were noticeably quiet over the capital during Dr Rice’s stopover. They had called an hour earlier and the smoke from their missile strikes would have been visible to Dr Rice as she arrived by US military helicopter at Beirut’s blitzed airport.

Even Mr Siniora hinted that he might be out of a job if the destruction continued, conceding: “No government can survive on the ruins of a nation.”

The mild-mannered technocrat took over after his long-time friend, Rafik Hariri, was murdered in a bomb attack in February 2005.

He has enjoyed popular support for pushing on with an ambitious investment programme that was to deliver Lebanon as a fashionable tourist resort and the region’s most advanced financial centre. Now 95 per cent of its bridges and 80 per cent of its main roads are destroyed, telecommunications are damaged and the United Nations appealed yesterday for $150 million to handle the immediate humanitarian crisis that is turning all corners of Beirut into a refugee camp.

Sami Haddad, the Minister of Economy and Trade, admitted last night that Lebanon was “very disappointed at America giving a blank cheque to carry out this destruction”.

If Israel believed that by bombarding Lebanon it would provoke the rival communities here to turn their anger on to Hezbollah, then the plan appears to have misfired. Even sworn enemies of the Shia militia in the Christian community are heard supporting Hezbollah’s stand against Israel’s invading tanks. Michel Araj, a doctor and former university lecturer, cannot remember having a good word for Hezbollah before, but says: “They are our only resistance. We don’t want to be over-run again.”

The face of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is on TV more often than that of Mr Siniora. If there was little prospect of the Government disarming Hezbollah before, it surely has no chance now.

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