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Annan urges quick end to Israel, Hizbollah disputes

Posted on: Tuesday, 29 August 2006, 11:51 CDT

By Hussein Saad

NAQOURA, Lebanon (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Israel and Hizbollah on a visit to devastated south Lebanon on Tuesday to swiftly settle disputes blocking a permanent ceasefire to be upheld by 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers.

He listed as "serious irritants" the fate of two Israeli soldiers seized by Hizbollah and that of Lebanese prisoners held in Israel, as well as an Israeli air and sea blockade of Lebanon imposed at the start of the war nearly seven weeks ago.

Annan later flew to Israel by helicopter on the second leg of his Middle East tour where he met the families of the two soldiers. He was due to meet Defense Minister Amir Peretz at 1700 GMT and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday.

"We need to resolve the issue of the abducted soldiers very quickly. Obviously the issue of the (Lebanese) prisoners ... will also have to be dealt with," Annan said in Naqoura, main base of the current 2,000-strong U.N. force in Lebanon.

Annan again called on Israel to lift its blockade of Lebanon, which he said the Lebanese saw as a "humiliation and infringement of their sovereignty." He reiterated calls for Beirut to exert control over its borders to stop arms smuggling.

Israel has refused to lift the blockade, citing the need to prevent the rearming of the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla group, whose capture of the Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked the 34-day war.

Olmert, under fire at home over his handling of the conflict, told local officials in northern Israel the Jewish state was still a force to be reckoned with.

"Two weeks after the war, I am still the one who is approving take-offs and landings in Beirut and that shows you that something happened here," the YNET News Web site quoted Olmert as saying in the city of Tiberias.

He also taunted Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

"While I am traveling around the north, Nasrallah has yet to come out of his bunker," Olmert said.

Annan is trying to secure full implementation of a Security Council resolution that halted the fighting on August 14 and mandated up to 15,000 U.N. troops to deploy in south Lebanon.

ITALIAN TROOPS

Italy's first contingent of 800 troops, out of an eventual 3,000 pledged, set sail on what Rome said would be a "long and risky" mission. The aircraft carrier Garibaldi and four other naval ships were due to reach Lebanon by Friday.

France promised to send a 900-strong battalion before the middle of September, with a second battalion to follow.

The Turkish government said it wanted parliament to meet on September 5 to approve a troop contribution to the U.N. force, a day after agreeing in principle to send soldiers.

Annan laid a wreath in Naqoura for five U.N. members killed by Israeli attacks during the war. He also flew over areas battered by Israeli bombing and visited U.N. bases.

Many thousands of civilians have returned to southern Lebanon, but are finding a landscape strewn with cluster bombs.

"Unexploded ordnance continues to be a major threat, especially to children," Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, said in Geneva.

He said 359 Israeli cluster bomb locations had been reported in the south, along with more than 60 unexploded bombs ranging from 500 lb (227 kg) to 2,000 lb (908 kg) in houses and gardens.

At least 12 people have been killed by cluster bombs since the war, which cost the lives of nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

The United Nations hopes to create a buffer zone in south Lebanon free of Israeli or Hizbollah forces and policed by the expanded U.N. force alongside some 15,000 Lebanese troops.

It is hoping Muslim nations will send troops to balance the 7,000 or so pledged by European countries.

Potential Muslim contributors include Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, although Israel has objected to their taking part because they have no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

The truce on Israel's northern border is generally holding, but violence has continued in the Palestinian territories.

Israeli troops killed three Palestinians near Gaza City, medics said, as the army battled militants in an offensive to free a soldier abducted by Gaza-based gunmen on June 25.

Two of the Palestinians were hit by a tank shell, witnesses said. The army said it was checking the report.

Israeli troops also killed two gunmen during a clash in the Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, witnesses said.

More than 190 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza in Israel's two-month-old offensive.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem, Geneva, Rome, Ankara and Paris bureaux)

Source: REUTERS

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