Ahmadinejad Today Will Stand A Few Kilometers from his Arch-Foe Israel

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes the closest he has ever been to his arch-foe Israel on Thursday when he tours Lebanon's southern border region on the second day of a high-profile visit.

The hardline leader, who has questioned the Holocaust and described Israel as a "tumor," will stand some four kilometers (about two miles) from the Jewish state on the final leg of a controversial two-day visit to Lebanon that Washington has described as "provocative".

Israeli officials have slammed his visit as a sign Lebanon had "joined the axis of extremist states."

"It is a provocative and destabilizing visit," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP in Jerusalem. "It appears his intentions are blatantly hostile and he is coming to play with fire."

Ahmadinejad's visit was "like a landlord visiting his domain," he said.

The Iranian leader has received a hero's welcome in Lebanon, especially among Hizbullah supporters who turned out en masse and showered him with rice and rose petals on his arrival Wednesday.

But his trip has drawn criticism from Lebanon's parliamentary majority, who see it as an attempt to turn the country into "an Iranian base on the Mediterranean."

Thursday's tour includes a stop in Bint Jbeil, a village demolished by Israel during its 2006 war with Hizbullah and rebuilt with the help of Iran, a financial, military and ideological supporter of the movement.

He will also visit Qana, which has earned a grim place in history after being targeted by Israeli shelling that killed 105 civilians who had sought shelter in a U.N. base in 1996 during the Jewish state's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive on Lebanon.

The village was again the site of tragedy when a shelter collapsed on dozens of residents, including disabled children, during Israeli strikes at the height of the month-long 2006 war.

But before heading to the south, Ahmadinejad held talks with Prime Minister Saad Hariri who hosted a luncheon in his honor.

Talks focused on the latest developments, the general situation and the bilateral relations between the two countries, according to Hariri's press office.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad was giving a lecture at the state-run Lebanese University in Hadath, Beiruit, where he will be granted an honorary doctorate in political science.

Ahmadinejad on Wednesday hailed Lebanon's resistance against the "Zionist regime" and offered his country's unconditional backing to that end after meeting with his counterpart Michel Suleiman and other Lebanese officials.

A beaming Ahmadinejad later appeared at a rally in the Hizbullah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut, waving to a rapturous crowd of tens of thousands.

In a speech, he repeated his prediction that Israel would disappear -- a cry echoed by Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who has lived in hiding since the 2006 war.

"President Ahmadinejad is right when he says Israel is illegitimate and should cease to exist," Nasrallah told the rally via video link.(AFP-Naharnet)