Rice seeks to bolster Lebanon during an unannounced visit

BEIRUT -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit here yesterday to bolster the first government formed after Syrian forces departed this spring, warning Syria to quit interfering in Lebanese politics and demanding it end a border tightening that threatens to hurt Lebanon's fragile economy. ''Good neighbors don't close their borders to their neighbors," Rice said at a news conference with the incoming Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora. ''It is a very serious situation on the Lebanon border where Lebanese trade is being strangled."

Shortly after Rice completed her seven-hour visit under tight security, an explosion rocked a busy street of restaurants and bars in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut late yesterday, Lebanese television stations reported. The blast, which wounded two people, took place about 600 yards from one of the spots Rice visited earlier.

Rice said she made the unexpected trip to support what she called ''the new Lebanon," one that she said would be democratic, ''free of foreign influence" and where ''Lebanese should make decisions for the Lebanese." She reiterated that the United States has no intention of dealing with representatives of Hezbollah, the pro-Syrian, Shiite Muslim movement that has gained 14 seats in the parliament and one Cabinet ministry. But she indicated the United States for now would give the nascent government breathing room on how to deal with an organization labeled by Washington as a terrorist group.

UN Security Council Resolution 1559, passed last year, demanded the disarming of militia groups in Lebanon among its key elements. Rice said Hezbollah had a ''history of blood" but ''there is a process of political reconciliation that is underway in Lebanon" which is important to support now.

Rice's decision to visit Lebanon was kept secret from even many of the aides traveling with her. Reporters accompanying Rice, who arrived Thursday in Israel after visiting Sudan, were awakened at 6:30 a.m. for a briefing on the sudden visit. US officials had insisted Rice had no plans to visit Lebanon until after a new government was formed, which finally occurred Tuesday, just as she was leaving on a trip to Africa and then Israel to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rice, with her motorcade's tires squealing as it veered through traffic to avoid potential attacks, crisscrossed this vast city of various religious and ethnic factions to meet with key leaders. In a bit of diplomatic choreography, she ignored the hordes of microphones set up by local media outside almost each meeting except when she met with Siniora, considered by US officials a potential reformer.

She met with the Saad Hariri, a member of parliament and son of Rafiq Hariri, a former prime minister whose car-bomb assassination in February led to an international outcry that forced Syria to withdraw its troops in April.

She also paid homage at Hariri's gravesite, near the waterfront between a huge blue-topped mosque and Virgin megastore. Accompanied by Saad Hariri, she silently placed a white-flowered wreath on the grave and then visited the nearby graves of seven bodyguards who were also killed. ''We love you, Condoleezza," a woman in the crowd shouted.

At another point, her motorcade crawled slowly past the site of the killing and the hulk of the blasted St. Georges Hotel destroyed by the attack.