From where David Miliband is standing, the Syrian “situation” looks quite encouraging. When the British foreign minister visited the country on Tuesday, President Bashar al-Assad did not hold forth on the virtues of Palestinian militants as he did at a humiliating Damascus press briefing with Tony Blair in 2001. Turkish-mediated talks with Israel and hope of lucrative trade deals with the EU indicated to the uninitiated or the blinkered that Syria was no longer quite the secretive, bellicose regime that has been a long, painful headache for the West. Indeed, even the fractious history of Lebanon-Syria relations appeared to have taken a positive turn when plans for an exchange of embassies were announced this summer.

Mr. Miliband is quite right to see Syria as a regional player. If Syria can be persuaded to cool relations toward Iran and lean westward, Iran’s aggressive rhetoric loses much of its impact. As British and American forces prepare to leave Iraq, Syria’s willingness to tighten its borders could make or break Iraqi stability. For all these reasons, and in the context of a new American administration, the minister’s visit, his talks with Assad, and even his chummy tour of the Hamadiyeh souk were understandable.

But today Mr. Miliband is on the other side of the border, speaking at the American University of Beirut, and he would do well to remember the dark side of the Baathist regime and the impact it could have on Lebanon if an internationally- rehabilitated Syria were given carte blanche in the Levant.

Syrian rhetoric on combating extremism may have reassuring resonance in London, but it rings rather hollow in Lebanon, where many Lebanese see Damascus as the arch deliverer of mayhem and murder. The Lebanese can read between the lines and were not surprised when Assad’s warnings of a growing terrorist threat in Tripoli in September were immediately followed by the deployment of thousands of troops along Lebanon’s northern border. Nor were they particularly stunned, when two weeks ago, state-run Syrian television broadcast images of members of Fatah al-Islam, confessing to involvement in the September 28 Damascus car bombing even the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, all funded apparently the latter’s family. 

You see, Mr. Miliband, in Lebanon, where the memories of Syrian occupation are still fresh and often painful, the TV confessions and the saber rattling along its border felt more like a pre-emptive justification for interference in Lebanese security matters or even a limited military intervention to press home the idea that only Damascus can guarantee Lebanon will not become a breeding ground for Sunni extremists.

One hopes that Mr. Miliband has told President Assad that such a course of action is beyond the pale. He may have promised to raise in Damascus the issue of the flow of “increasingly lethal arms to Hezbollah,” but he should bear in mind that Syria’s ambitions in Lebanon stretch beyond its relationship with the Party of God. Indeed there may even be evidence that Damascus is seeking to distance itself from the Iranian-backed party.

Mr. Miliband should not forget that the Syrian regime is high on the list of suspects in the Hariri and subsequent assassinations and has been quietly working with its allies in Lebanon to thwart the desire of most Lebanese to see justice run its course. Mr. Miliband’s government supports the UN-sponsored International Tribunal to bring Hariri’s killers to justice, and therefore he must not backtrack and allow Syria to believe that immunity from judicial proceedings can be won with warm diplomacy. It would be fatal for Lebanon’s aspirations of genuine democracy, sovereignty and independence.

Today Mr. Miliband will bask in traditional Lebanese hospitality. But when he takes the podium at the AUB, we should ensure that he is in no doubt that any concessions he makes to Lebanon’s bigger and more powerful neighbor will be catastrophic on a country whose sovereignty his government has said is a priority. We should remind him of 30 years of occupation, of the murder, torture, theft, corruption, intimidation and fear.

It is our duty to remind him.