Posted on 09/08/2001 1:20:13 AM PDT by IRtorqued
UN: tensions eased at Ghajar on Lebanon-Israel border
By Reuters
UNITED NATIONS - Stepped-up peacekeeping patrols have lowered tensions at a village straddling the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where Israeli troops feared attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas based in Lebanon, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.
Responding to an Israeli claim peacekeepers had abandoned a checkpoint at the village, Jean-Marie Guehenno, undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, said the situation at the village of Ghajar had been calmed by "assertive patrolling." Unspecified political initiatives and "close contact with the villagers and other local Lebanese" had also helped, he said.
But in Beirut, a Hezbollah official said the group refused to guarantee it would not attack Israeli troops occupying Ghajar.
"I do not hide from you. Israel sent messages through different means wanting guarantees that nothing would happen in the Syrian and Lebanese Ghajar," said Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naeem Kassem.
"We said that we would not give security guarantees to Israel in any liberated (south Lebanese) area. Let it remain worried," Kassem said on al-Manar television.
Ghajar is home to 10,000 members of the Alawite Islamic sect found in neighboring Syria. The United Nations, which certified Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon last year by drawing a "blue line" on the ground, assigned the northern two-thirds of the village to Lebanon and the rest to Syria's Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.
Hezbollah last month moved closer to Israeli troops occupying the other side of Ghajar and set up a checkpoint facing them. Israel said it had no intention of escalating the situation.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon last year after a 22-year occupation. It continues to wage a low intensity war on the Shebaa Farms, a disputed strip of land near Ghajar occupied by Israel.
The United Nations says Shebaa Farms lies in occupied Syria and has refused to endorse claims by Beirut and Damascus that it is Lebanese territory.
Guehenno, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council, said the U.N. force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, would closely watch the village but stressed that primary responsibility for keeping the situation under control "rests with the parties."
He was responding to a note that Israel sent to the 15-nation council last week saying UNIFIL had recently abandoned a checkpoint at Ghajar and urging the United Nations to resume staffing the outpost.
Guehenno denied there had ever been a checkpoint at the village, saying UNIFIL had merely been storing containers next to the village while a nearby outpost was under construction.
"While the containers were an obstacle to the road to Ghajar, they did not by any means prevent or control all access to the road, nor were they intended to prevent Lebanese access to Lebanese land," Guehenno said.
Israel's letter accused UNIFIL of withdrawing peacekeepers from the outpost on Ghajar's northern edge despite an Israeli warning that this posed "a clear and present danger to the security of Israeli soldiers and civilians."
"Israel has made it abundantly clear that it cannot accept a situation in which its border is permeable to acts of terror without being able to take action to prevent them," Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Lancry had said in the letter.
It's too bad the UN is not for Israel, then maybe they could catch a few suicide bombers.
Be sure to see this one:
Breaking: US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001
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