United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan will see the destruction in southern Lebanon at first hand on Tuesday when he visits the area during a Middle East tour designed to cement a truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
On the first stop of his tour, Annan issued a warning in Beirut on Monday that all sides must fully implement UN Security Council resolution 1701 or face a possible new war.
”Without the full implementation of resolution 1701 I fear the risk is great for a renewal of hostilities,” Annan told a news conference.
Annan will travel on Tuesday to the town of Naqoura, home to a UN force in Lebanon due to be expanded from 2 000 troops to 15 000, and is expected to fly over an area that bore the brunt of Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling in the 34-day war.
Aides to Annan have said he will travel to Israel later in the day before heading to Syria and Iran, main backers of the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, later in the week.
Annan has said he will call on Israel to lift its six-week-old sea and air blockade of Lebanon as part of his drive to secure implementation of the Security Council resolution that brought about the fragile truce on August 14.
”I am urging my Israeli interlocutors to lift immediately the blockade on Lebanon,” Annan said after talks with the Lebanese government and politicians close to Hezbollah.
‘Why is he here now?
During a visit to war-battered areas of southern Beirut on Monday, Annan was heckled by scores of Hizbollah supporters. He was forced to cut short the visit and was driven away.
”He came after the war, after the destruction. Why is he here now?” said Ashraf Koukha (25) one of the protesters.
At his news conference in Beirut, Annan urged Hezbollah to release the two Israeli soldiers whose capture in a cross-border raid by the guerrilla group on July 12 sparked the conflict.
Hezbollah wants to swap the two soldiers for Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails through indirect negotiations.
Annan also said he would ask Syria this week to police its border with Lebanon to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah.
A Lebanese government source said Annan told the Cabinet he would urge Syria to set up diplomatic ties with Lebanon for the first time in the history of the two neighbours.
The United Nations is hoping to bolster peace in southern Lebanon through the deployment of the planned 15 000-strong force and 15 000 Lebanese troops who are being dispatched.
”The European countries are in the process of contributing nearly 9 000 troops and I am working with other countries to supplement this force,” Annan said.
In New York, UN diplomats and officials said on Monday governments firmed up offers of troops, warships and tanks to the beefed-up UN force in southern Lebanon.
Italy, which agreed to send up to 3 000 troops, told UN officials it would initially send 2 496 soldiers, with the first of those able to arrive within 48 to 72 hours, they said.
The head of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said Muslim countries should match the European contribution.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told Reuters in Beirut this would entail a pledge of around 7 000 troops.
Annan will arrive in Israel a day after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a low-level inquiry into the Lebanon war.
Olmert, criticised at home for his handling of the war, rejected a proposal for a fuller, independent probe that could have led to high-level resignations in the government and military.
Israel is trying to secure the release of a third soldier, captured by militants in the Gaza Strip, as well as the two in Lebanon.
Israeli troops killed two Palestinian gunmen from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, during a clash in Balata refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, witnesses said.
More than 190 Palestinians, over half of them civilians, have been killed since Israel launched an offensive in June to free the soldier. – Reuters