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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (6713)	1/10/2005 9:54:01 PM
From: paret	Respond to of 22250

UN says Hezbollah bears main blame for French peacekeeper’s death Khaleej Times ^ \| January 10 2005 \| AFP BEIRUT - The United Nations said Monday that Shiite militant group Hezbollah bore the main responsibility for the death of a French peacekeeper in a flare-up of violence on the Israel-Lebanon border. UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said the violence had been sparked by a Hezbollah attack that killed one Israeli soldier and wounded three, violating the so-called Blue Line drawn up to mark the border following Israel’s 2000 pullout from south Lebanon. “We are expressing ... serious concern over what happened yesterday with the attack of Hezbollah across the Blue Line,” the envoy said after talks with Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud. “We can’t forget anyway that the event started with the attack across the Blue Line.” De Mistura rejected Hezbollah’s argument that attacks on the disputed Shebaa Farms district were justified because it remained under Israeli occupation. “We consider the Blue Line (extends) all the way up to Shebaa, including Shebaa,” he said. The formerly Syrian-controlled district was occupied by Israel in 1967 along with the rest of the strategic Golan Heights but is now claimed by Lebanon with Syrian blessing. De Mistura expressed “deep, deep sadness” over the death of the French peacekeeper and the wounding of a Swedish comrade in retaliatory Israeli fire. “We have been asking all sides first to remember that they are responsible for the safety of our own colleagues who are working for peace,” he said. The UN envoy noted that the mandate of the 27-year-old United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon was up for renewal by the Security Council later this month. “We are in a very delicate period not only in the history of Lebanon but of the region,” he said. “This is the time to maintain calm ... We’re asking all sides to contain their actions.” Hezbollah retorted that its attack was a response to a separate UN Security Council resolution passed last September calling for an end to foreign interference in Lebanon and the deployment of government troops right up to the Blue Line. “Our response can be viewed as an answer to the international pressures exerted on both Lebanon and Syria to disarm the resistance and to assure everyone that our struggle will continue,” Hezbollah official Mahmud Qmati told Lebanon’s Daily Star. Hezbollah, which is backed by both Syria and its key regional ally Iran, has effectively controlled Lebanon’s deep south since Israel’s pullout. AP's version: French Officer Killed by Israeli Shelling 5 posted on 01/10/2005 1:14:26 PM EST by facedown French Officer Killed by Israeli Shelling ap \| 1/10/05 \| HUSSEIN DAKROUB French Officer Killed by Israeli Shelling By HUSSEIN DAKROUB .c The Associated Press BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Israeli military fire killed a French U.N. peacekeeper shortly after a Hezbollah bomb attack claimed the life of an Israeli soldier in a day of violence near the border in southern Lebanon, Lebanese and U.N officials said. A Swedish officer also was wounded by the Israeli shelling on Sunday, Milos Struger, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL, said in a statement from the force's headquarters in the Lebanese border town of Naqoura. Hezbollah said one of its guerrillas was killed in fighting with Israeli troops. The Lebanon-Israel border has been largely quiet since Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000 after an 18-year occupation. However, Hezbollah guerrillas have occasionally attacked Israeli troops in the disputed Chebaa Farms area where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet. Sunday's violence began when Hezbollah guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb that destroyed an Israeli military vehicle, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding three others, Lebanese security officials said. In Jerusalem, the Israeli military confirmed an officer was killed in the Hezbollhah attack. An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israeli planes struck three unidentified Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon after the Hezbollah attack. The warplanes fired missiles twice at Hezbollah's Tal el-Hamamseh observation post near the Israeli town of Metullah, seven miles west of the attack area, and shelled another position at Rweisat, Lebanese security officials said. Israeli planes also fired two missiles on a suspected guerrilla hideout east of the Lebanese village of Kfar Chouba near the Chebaa Farms, the officials in south Lebanon said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The violence came on the same day Palestinians elected a successor - Mahmoud Abbas, according to exit polls - to the late Yasser Arafat. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the attack ``is intended to create a reality of terror on the day of the Palestinian elections.'' Hezbollah denied that accusation. ``It is a natural operation as part of the resistance's struggle to liberate the Chebaa Farms,'' Sheik Hassan Ezzeddine, Hezbollah's senior political officer in south Lebanon, told AP late Sunday. Struger said a French officer was ``killed by shelling from the Israeli side of the Blue Line,'' the border line drawn by U.N. troops following Israel's withdrawal from a border zone in south Lebanon in 2000. He said the French peacekeeper and wounded Swedish officer worked for the U.N. Observer Group Lebanon, a U.N. agency that monitors the 1948 Armistice Agreement between Lebanon and Israel. A senior Israeli military investigator told The Associated Press in Jerusalem that the peacekeeper's death ``apparently is the result of our tank fire.'' He also said the peacekeepers were not wearing a U.N. beret. But Struger said the U.N. soldiers were ``on duty, on patrol in a clearly marked vehicle.'' U.N. officers travel in white vehicles, with the U.N. initials in black text on the sides. The Chebaa Farms is uninhabited farmland on the foothills of Mount Hermon that Lebanon, backed by Syria, claims as its own. Israel captured the territory when its forces seized Syria's Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war. The United Nations says the region is Syrian and that Syria and Israel should negotiate its fate. Hezbollah, a Syrian- and Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militant group, led the guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of a border zone in south Lebanon. Israel and the United States consider Hezbollah a terrorist group, but Lebanon regards it as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation. 01/10/05 02:30 EST