WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was considering a financial package to beef up the military of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, who has expressed fears of an attempted Syrian-backed coup.

"We are still working out the details of what we can do to support the army," Rice said in an interview published in The Washington Post Friday.

In addition, she said, the Bush administration needed to have consultations with Congress over the package.

"But we have wanted very much to support the reform of the Lebanese armed forces, the reequipping of the Lebanese armed forces," Rice said as supporters of the Syrian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its Christian allies continued mass demonstrations in Beirut against Siniora's Western-backed government.

Syria was the powerbroker in Lebanon for nearly three decades. It was forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon last year amid a public outcry over the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri, widely blamed on Syria, a charge Damascus denies.

Lebanon's pro-Syrian political opposition now wants to bring down Siniora's government over demands for greater power sharing, seen by the government as a ploy to reassert Syrian influence in the country.

The United States and European Union have warned Iran and Syria against meddling in the affairs of their neighbors.

"It's not just the package that we would put forward, but it's also the package that I think others are prepared to, including the mainstream Arab states are prepared to contribute to," Rice said.

"Because ultimately that's one of the most important things that you can do is to strengthen the Lebanese armed forces probably not to replace the United Nations forces for some time, but to be more capable themselves of defending the country and providing a stable platform," she said.

She said she could not give details of the aid package.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is deployed near the border with Israel, tasked with backing up the Lebanese army under a UN accord which ended hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on August 14.