Posted on 06/30/2005 11:14:04 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council expressed serious concern on Thursday at the flare-up of fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israel in a disputed Syria-Lebanese border zone.
The 15-member body called on Lebanon to extend control over the entire country by deploying its army in all areas and "to put an end to all attacks emanating from its territory."
The Security Council last September demanded foreign forces withdraw from Lebanon and militia, like Hizbollah, be disarmed. "In this context, they expressed serious concerns at (Wednesday's) attack," the council said in a press statement.
On Thursday, Israeli helicopters struck at Hizbollah a day after the guerrillas killed an Israeli officer in the worst border violence in six months. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at Hizbollah positions and later raked hillsides with machine-gun fire inside south Lebanon, witnesses said.
Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador, criticized the statement for not specifically mentioning the September resolution 1559 and for not saying that Hizbollah started the conflict.
Other members said the council statements had not blamed Israel in previous incidents when it fired the first shot.
"This was a difficult negotiation," Patterson said. "The statement was weaker than we would have liked."
"It did not recognize the fault of Hizbollah in attacking," she said. "The Lebanese armed forces need to deploy into southern Lebanon as quickly as possible and take control of their own territory."
Hizbollah was instrumental in ending Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. The two foes have clashed sporadically in the Shebaa Farms area since then.
Lebanon and Syria say Shebaa Farms is Lebanese territory, but U.N. cartographers who surveyed the border after the Israeli withdrawal determined it was part of the Syrian Golan Heights that Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The United Nations has said the two nations were free to demarcate their own border, which they have not done.
The United States called for a U.N. briefing on the clash after Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman filed a protest with the Security Council and Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Gillerman told reporters, "The message from the security council today was a very strong one.
"This is an act of terrorism taken across the border ... by a militia that is active within a sovereign country," he said.
A United Nations armored vehicle patrols the border with Israel in Kfar Kila village in south Lebanon June 30, 2005. Israeli troops shot at Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas in a disputed border zone on Thursday, a day after an attack that killed an Israeli officer in the worst violence there for six months. (Karamallah Daher/Reuters)
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