Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Lebanon: The Elusive "Enduring Peace"
Thrust and Parry in Rome
The parties agreed to disagree in the 18-nation Rome meeting to find a solution to the current crisis. People in the war zone can expect their suffering to continue until the super powers find a way to reach "enduring peace" -- a phrase which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice keeps repeating. It has a bite to it and she obviously likes the sound. One can even see a smirk (shadow of G.W. Bush) in her face. "But the participating foreign ministers could not agree on the timing of a cease-fire, with the United States standing by its position that a settlement be in place for an "enduring" peace prior to a cessation of hostilities. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly disagreed at a grim-faced news conference on whether Iran and Syria should be involved in talks, with Annan saying they should, and Rice denouncing the two nations for their role in the region."
| After listening to the news conference, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora expressed despair. Saying his country was being "cut to pieces" by Israel, Siniora said: "We really wanted, on the one hand, to really ask the participants to provide humanitarian relief assistance, which is important, and to provide all other assistance. . . . But more, we wanted a cease-fire, an immediate cease-fire." U.S. officials briefing after the meeting played down disagreements. But others did not. Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said that "we agreed upon what we could agree upon, but that does not change the fact that the European Union has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities" while the United States has not. |
Four members of UNIFIL died yesterday after repeated bombing of the UN base at Lebanon-Israeli border. "The UN general secretary, Kofi Annan, today accused the Israeli military of carrying out a sustained bombing of the UN base on the Lebanon-Israel border that culminated in the killing of four unarmed monitors.Mr Annan said he had suggested to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that they carry out a joint investigation into the events that led to the shelling of the "well-established and well marked" Unifil (UN interim force in Lebanon) post in the town of Khiyam."
According to a detailed timeline of the incident provided by an unidentified UN officer and reported by CNN, the first bomb exploded around 200 metres from the post at 1.20pm (11.20am BST) yesterday. Unifil observers then telephoned their designated contact with the Israeli military, who assured them the attacks would stop. In the following hours, nine more bombs fell close to the post, each one followed by a call to the Israeli military, the UN officer said. The main Unifil base in the town of Naqoura lost contact with the post at 7.40pm, seemingly the time when the post received a direct hit. |
