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Diplomats Seek Foreign Patrols for Middle East    [
Lebanon: The World Looks On    [

    Thousands of Lebanese Flee to Beirut From Unstable South
    By Jerome Taylor
    The Independent UK

    Tuesday 18 July 2006

    As foreign powers mobilised to evacuate their citizens, tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians were fleeing the country's southern areas last night, following six days of near-continual bombardment by Israeli artillery and air power.

    Officials said more than 58,000 people had been displaced by the fighting and 14,000 have headed to the relative safety of Beirut, despite the fact that Lebanon's capital has been attacked every day since Thursday.

    Thousands of people from Beirut's southern Shia suburbs, a stronghold of Hizbollah and a major target for Israeli bombing raids, have also fled into the city centre to avoid the daily air strikes that have killed an average of 33 Lebanese civilians a day.

    Speaking from the cramped and increasingly squalid Sanayeh Gardens - one of Beirut's oldest parks, used as a refugee camp during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon - Ali Sharara, 21, said, "My brother and I have been here more than two days. My mother and sisters are in Ashrafieh, I don't know where exactly. I can't believe they [the Israelis] are doing all this for two captives. This is just an excuse."

    Another refugee, Hussein Ajami, said: "We've been sleeping outside on the grass. They keep telling us about schools that have opened their doors, but when we get there we find them already full."

    The reappearance of so many refugees in Lebanon is a stark and depressing reminder of the country's 15-year civil war which killed more than 100,000 people and created a refugee crisis. Many of the sites that once housed refugees from the civil war and Israel's previous invasion of Lebanon are fast filling up again.

    There are also fears that the arrival of so many refugees may upset Beirut's delicate sectarian balance. Most of the new arrivals are Shia Muslims who are having to find shelter and support in Beirut's Sunni and Christian areas.

    The government's struggling Interior Ministry began trying to set up gathering points where families and refugees could try and find shelter. Hizbollah supporters were also out in force organising refugee centres.

 

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    Diplomats Seek Foreign Patrols for Mideast
    By Steven Erlanger and Jad Mouawad
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 18 July 2006

    Jerusalem - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations called Monday for an international force in southern Lebanon to end the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia, which continued for a sixth deadly day.

    The United States and Israel reacted skeptically, with President Bush urging tartly that Mr. Annan telephone President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a key sponsor of Hezbollah, "and make something happen." In Russia for a Group of 8 summit meeting, Mr. Bush expressed his views to Mr. Blair, using a vulgarity that was caught by an open microphone.

    With the Lebanese death toll exceeding 200 and the Israeli count at 24, the increased efforts to turn to diplomacy showed little prospect of an immediate way out. In Lebanon, a vast majority of those killed were civilians, while in Israel about half of the dead were civilians.

    In a televised speech to the Israeli Parliament, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to continue the offensive until Hezbollah freed two captured Israeli soldiers, the Lebanese Army was deployed along the border, and Hezbollah was effectively disarmed. Hezbollah has consistently rejected those terms.

    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to the Middle East to try to resolve the crisis, Bush administration officials said. The timing is still up in the air, and the trip will be a gamble. Israel's ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon, said on CNN that it might be too soon for Ms. Rice to accomplish anything.

    Israel intensified its bombing across Lebanon on Monday, hitting an army barracks in Tripoli and bases in Baalbek, both in the north. It shelled fuel tanks in Beirut's port and continued pounding southern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs. In the afternoon, Israel made a brief ground raid into Lebanon.

    Israeli military officials said they succeeded in hitting a rocket launcher in Beirut carrying one of Hezbollah's longest-range rockets, an Iranian Zelzal, with a range of 62 to 124 miles. The attack caused the rocket to flare in the air, leading to reports that an Israeli plane might have been shot down.

    At least 43 Lebanese were killed Monday, according to Lebanese authorities, raising the toll to more than 200 since the Israeli offensive began Thursday. In one large group of fatalities, a missile hit a minibus, killing 12 civilians as they were driving through Rmeileh, a seaside town south of Beirut.

    [Early Tuesday, Israeli warplanes pounded south Lebanon, killing six members of a family in Aytaroun village, Reuters reported.]

    Some 30 rockets fired by Hezbollah hit Haifa and other parts of northern Israel. One rocket leveled much of an apartment house, critically wounding one person. Another Hezbollah rocket landed next to a hospital in Safed, slightly wounding six people.

    Israel's rejection of an international force stems partly from recent history. The foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said in an interview that such a force must be able to intervene, unlike the current troops, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or Unifil, which was established in 1978.

    "We have an experience with Unifil," she said: When an Israeli was seized previously, "they just watched."

    The Israeli military wants to continue its largely aerial campaign against Hezbollah, with one senior Israeli official suggesting that Hezbollah's capacity to launch missiles had already been degraded "about 30 percent."

    Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, on the Israeli general staff, said, "We have damaged Hezbollah but they still have significant operational capacity." He noted the decline in rockets launched into Israel in the last two days - an average of 40 a day, down from initial highs of 150 - and said it was a testament to the damage caused by the Israelis.

    "It will take time, it's more than a matter of days on the military side," he said. "We aim to change the situation and not go back to where we are."

    Israel's deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, told Agence France-Presse: "The operation will last for at least another week. The international pressure on Israel will allow us to continue for another week at least."

    In his speech, Prime Minister Olmert said, "The terrorist organizations we are fighting take their orders from the Tehran-Damascus axis of evil." He said Israel would continue to fight until both Hezbollah and Hamas stopped attacks on Israel.

    "In Lebanon, we will fight to enforce the demands long voiced by the international community," he said. He demanded "an absolute end to fire" from Hezbollah, "the deployment of the Lebanese Army all along the southern border, and the departure of Hezbollah from this region and fulfillment of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559."

    That resolution calls for the pullout of all foreign forces from Lebanon, the disbanding and disarmament of all militias and the deployment of the Lebanese Army on the border. But the Security Council included no provisions to implement the agreement, and the Lebanese government, which contains some Hezbollah ministers, is considered too weak to do so.

    Hezbollah is supported by Iran and Syria, and Mr. Bush's pungent conclusion, as he summarized it to Mr. Blair in Russia was, "What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over."

    The current conflict began when Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12, and Israel immediately attacked Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, calling the initial incursion an act of war. Hezbollah, a radical Shiite group, was established with Iranian help in 1982 to fight Israel, and both Iran and Syria supply the group with money and weaponry.

    "Israel is making it possible for the Lebanese government to move in," Foreign Minister Livni said. "In a way, Israel is doing the Lebanese government's job for it" by taking on Hezbollah, which has been a state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon and southern Beirut.

    "Israel shares the same goals as the international community, and for us the best option is full implementation of 1559," Ms. Livni said. "That's the way out of this crisis, and now is the time to implement it."

    It was a great accomplishment to get the Syrians largely out of Lebanon, she said, but there is more to do. "The Syrians have left," she said, "but they have a kind of branch in Lebanon, and Hezbollah keeps an open front for Iran with Israel."

    At the United Nations, the Security Council went into its third session on Lebanon in four days, but beforehand John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, discouraged talk of a multilateral force. Three questions must be addressed, he said: "Would such a force be empowered to deal with the real problem? The real problem is Hezbollah. Would it be empowered to deal with countries like Syria and Iran that support Hezbollah?"

    Third, he said, was how a new force would improve on Unifil or help strengthen Lebanese institutions.

    Asked why the United States was not backing an immediate cease-fire, he said, "We could have a cease-fire in a matter of nanoseconds if Hezbollah and Hamas would release their kidnap victims and would stop engaging in rocket attacks and other acts of terrorism against Israel."

    A United Nations mission dispatched by Mr. Annan to the region will make its first visit to Israel on Friday and return to report at the end of the week.

    Initially, Mr. Olmert refused to see the team, but changed his mind after Ms. Livni argued that a robust international force that could enforce Resolution 1559, blessed by the United Nations, would be an opportunity for Israel to be seen on the right side of international legitimacy.

    The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, met with Mr. Annan's team and said afterward, "We don't want to talk about any steps before they become concrete, and I want to assure the Lebanese people that we are exerting all possible efforts to resolve the crisis."

    Michael Young, a Lebanese political analyst, said: "The Israelis are creating a humanitarian and social and economic crisis. But there is also a great deal of anger in the country at Hezbollah for inviting disaster on Lebanon."

    Officials in Washington said an attack on Friday on an Israeli naval vessel by a C-802 anti-ship cruise missile was Hezbollah's most sophisticated to date. Given that advanced radar is needed to guide a C-802 to its target, Israeli officials have accused the Lebanese military of directly aiding Hezbollah fighters, and Israeli jets struck several radar targets in Lebanon over the weekend.

    Of the 13,000 missiles and rockets estimated to be in Hezbollah's arsenal, about 11,000 are believed to have been shipped from Iran. Western intelligence officials also say Syria has armed Hezbollah with short- and medium-range rockets, some of which have been used in the current attacks on Israel.

    Western governments were rushing to set up evacuation plans for thousands of foreigners living in Lebanon or on vacation there. British military helicopters started carrying some out of Lebanon on Monday. A Greek passenger ferry chartered by the French government reached Beirut Monday afternoon and loaded about 1,200 people before heading for Cyprus. Norway, Sweden, Italy and Ukraine also started organizing the departure of their citizens.

    The United States is planning to start evacuating its citizens on Tuesday. The embassy said there was no mandatory evacuation. There are 8,000 Americans registered with the embassy, but the number of Americans or Lebanese also holding American citizenship could be three times larger.

    At the Pentagon on Monday, officials said a commercial passenger ship had been contracted to ferry Americans from Lebanon to Cyprus. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the ship, the Orient Queen, would be able to carry 750 passengers at a time on the five-hour trip.

    A Navy destroyer would be available to escort the ship, Mr. Whitman said.

    By early Monday, 64 Americans, designated by the embassy as having special needs, had been evacuated by Marine helicopters.

    In front of the French Consulate in Beirut, stranded tourists and foreign residents lugged their bags and lined up to register for evacuation.

    "I'm worried this may drag on, and I'm leaving," said Souad Mehdi, 32, a French citizen on vacation with her two sons. "My heart and thoughts are still here with my family and friends. I am scared I won't see them again."

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    Steven Erlanger reported from Jerusalem for this article, and Jad Mouawad from Beirut. Reporting was contributed by Jim Rutenberg and C. J. Chivers from St. Petersburg, Russia; Warren Hoge from the United Nations; and Helene Cooper, Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

 

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    Lebanon: The World Looks On
    By Ewen MacAskill and Rory McCarthy, and Patrick Wintour
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 18 July 2006

EU criticism of Israel removed. Statement diluted following British pressure. Death toll passes 200.

    Western leaders remained paralysed yesterday as Lebanon suffered one of its bloodiest days since Israel began its bombardment a week ago.

    For the second time in 48 hours western governments declined to intervene as Israeli forces, on the sixth day of aerial attacks, killed 47 people and wounded at least 53. Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed militia, also stepped up its attacks, launching 50 rockets against Israel, the highest number in a single day. The death toll since Israel began its attack has risen to 210 in Lebanon and 29 in Israel.

    Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, dismissed hopes of a quick resolution to the conflict last night, vowing his military would continue operating at full intensity. He said Israel would not stop until two of its captured soldiers were freed, the Lebanese army deployed to protect Israel's northern border and Hizbullah forced to disarm.

    He said both Hizbollah and Hamas, the Palestinian group, were working with the support of "the axis of evil that stretches from Tehran to Damascus. When missiles rain on our cities, our response will be to wage war with greater determination, courage and sacrifice," he said. "We don't seek war or head-on confrontation but if necessary we shall not flinch from them."

    After the failure of the G8 meeting in St Petersburg at the weekend to step in, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday also settled for a bland joint statement that exposed divisions between European governments.

    EU foreign ministers called on Israel not to resort to "disproportionate action" but criticism of Israel in an original draft was diluted after pressure from Britain and Germany, Israel's closest EU allies.

    In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike yesterday afternoon on a bridge in the port city of Sidon left 10 civilians dead, including two children. Three Israeli tanks briefly crossed into Lebanon and Israeli Army Radio, quoting a senior officer, said Israel would enforce a half-mile "free-fire" zone to bar Hizbullah from the border.

    For the second straight day, Hizbullah rockets landed in the coastal city of Haifa where officials closed the port. A rocket hit and demolished part of a house, leaving two people injured, one seriously. Other rockets reached even further south into Israel, as far as the town of Afula, just above the West Bank.

    The British government airlifted 41 Britons stranded in Lebanon and promised to evacuate others by sea if necessary. The US sent an aircraft carrier in preparation for an evacuation of thousands of its 25,000 citizens in Lebanon.

    The US and Britain insisted on Sunday at the G8 summit in St Petersburg that criticism of Israel be removed from a joint communique. Both appear ready to allow Israel a further few days in which to target Hizbullah, after which there will be a ceasefire.

    A Foreign Office source said: "Everyone is grappling with this but no one is entirely sure how to deal with it."

    John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, insisted that the UN security council should delay any action until the UN envoy now in the Middle East, Vijay Nambiar, returns this week to New York. Mr Nambiar said: "We hope that we will be able to see our way toward ... a de-escalation of the crisis."

    Tony Blair and Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, called yesterday for the 2,000-strong UN observer force on the Israel-Lebanon border to be expanded. Mr Blair said: "The only way we're going to get a cessation of hostilities is if we have the deployment of an international force into that area, that can stop the bombardment over into Israel, and therefore give Israel a reason to stop its attacks on Hizbullah." But the US is lukewarm and Israel described the proposal as premature.

    The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, flew to Beirut, the highest-level international presence since the crisis began. He called on Israel and Hizbollah to implement an immediate ceasefire on humanitarian grounds and for the release of the Israeli soldiers.

    The Iranian foreign minister, Manoucher Mottaki, said yesterday that end to the fighting and an exchange of hostages would be acceptable and fair. Iran is the main backer of Hizbullah, which is holding the two Israeli soldiers prisoner. After meeting Syrian officials in Damascus, he said: "A reasonable and just solution must be found to end this crisis. A ceasefire and then a swap is achievable."

    Exasperation with the international response was expressed last night by Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister. In an interview with Channel 4 News he said: "Until now I am very disappointed, but I can tell you there is still time to make a real decision in the UN. Stop this massacre that is happening in Lebanon because the more they inflict casualties the worse it becomes."

    In the wind-up of the St Petersburg summit, Mr Bush and Mr Blair blamed Iran and Syria for encouraging Hizbullah. In a private conversation picked up by a microphone, the two men singled out Bashir Assad, the Syrian president, as the figure stoking violence in the Palestinian territories and Iraq as well as in Lebanon. They claimed that Mr Assad was trying to destabilise the region and block the introduction of democracy.

    Parts of the conversation were almost inaudible but a senior British diplomat confirmed that the two leaders had identified Mr Assad as the prime culprit and described him sarcastically as a real sweetie and honey.