US encourages Syria to focus on its own internal challenges: Rubio

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that Washington is encouraging Syria to focus on its own internal challenges, urging the country to secure its border with Lebanon.

Asked if the US is trying to get Syria involved in fighting Hezbollah, Rubio told reporters that "what we've encouraged Syria to do is to focus on its own internal challenges that it has."

The US has removed Syria "from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which … hopefully is the sort of economic revival that the country desperately needs," he added.

"Syria is a country that has a history of different communities for many, many years living alongside one another in peace," the top diplomat said.

He said Damascus has a "huge project on their hands in that regard, and so we've encouraged them to focus on that."

"But we understand the threat that Hezbollah is an enemy of this new government in Syria, and they, in many ways, have sought to seek to undermine that government over time," Rubio said.

"One of the best things Syria can do to secure its future is to secure their border with Lebanon, so that we don't have weapons and arms coming back and forth across that border in an effort to destabilize Syria," he added.