Lebanon calls for Ceasefire

3assal

Junior Member
Lebanon Calls for Ceasefire at Security Council, Seeks International Probe into Qana Attack


Lebanon on Monday demanded that Israel agree an immediate ceasefire as the two nations sparred at a special U.N. Security Council meeting on the crisis.
Acting foreign minister Tarek Mitri also sought an international investigation into Israel's bombing of Qana on Sunday which killed more than 60 people, including 35 children.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said it was up to Lebanon to act to end attacks on Israel by Hizbullah. Gillerman told the council that Lebanon had become "a hotbed of terrorism in a cesspool of hatred."

Mitri told an open meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the Lebanese government called for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire" in the hostilities that started on July 12 after Hizbullah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.

Reading from a text agreed by the Lebanese cabinet, the minister said there should be a declaration of agreement by the two on topics including an exchange of prisoners between Hizbullah and Israel through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Israeli forces would have to withdraw behind the "blue line" frontier between southern Lebanon and Israel and to allow displaced people to return to their villages.

Mitri said that the Security Council would have to place the Shabaa Farms area that Israel occupies under UN jurisdiction, while a long term settlement to the claim is organized.

He demanded that Israel hand over maps of its landmines in southern Lebanon to the United Nations.

In return the Lebanese government would seek to extend its authority over all the country "through its own legitimate armed forces such that there will be no weapons or authority other than that of the Lebanese state."

A reinforced international force with a strong U.N. mandate would deploy in southern Lebanon to help humanitarian work and enforce Lebanese authority, he said.

"We owe our people an honorable way out of this war," Mitri told the meeting. "In the name of Lebanon I appeal to you all to put an end to this human tragedy."

In his reply, Gillerman said that Israel "has been repeatedly forced to act, not against Lebanon, but against the forces and the monstrosity which Lebanon has allowed itself to be taken hostage by."

"Lebanon has repeatedly, sadly and tragically been taken over time after time," said the Israeli envoy, "by tyrants in the north, namely Syria, who still regard Lebanon as southern Syria."

He said Lebanon has "allowed itself to be taken hostage by terrorists of the worst kind. The PLO in the 1980s, the Hizbullah in the 1990s."

Gillerman added: "Isn't it time that Lebanon took its fate into its own hands rather than keep crying out to the Security Council and to the international community."

He said Israeli forces had reentered Lebanon to defend itself against "a blatant act of war" by Hizbullah by kidnapping the soldiers and launching rocket attacks in Israel.

Mitri said he had also gone to the Security Council "to ask for the setting in motion of an international investigation with regard of the crime of Qana -- Qana the second where a massacre took place in 1996," he said referring to a previous killing of civilians during an Israeli military operation.

He called Sunday's bombing of a house where civilians had taken refuge "a blatant violation of international law."(AFP) (AP photo shows Minister of Culture and Acting Foreign Minister Tarek Mitri talking with members of the media outside Security Council Chamber)

sourcehttp://www.naharnet.com
 
Top