United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday Lebanon and Israel have accepted his offer to mediate the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah in July.
”The two sides have accepted the effort of the secretary general to help solve this problem,” Annan told a news conference in Saudi Arabia. ”I will appoint a person to work secretly with the two sides … I will not announce his name today [Monday] or tomorrow [Tuesday],” he said through an Arabic interpreter.
The soldiers’ abduction in a daring cross-border raid from Lebanon touched off 34 days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that ended in a truce last month. The fighting killed more than 1 300 people, mostly Lebanese civilians.– Reuters