Lebanonwire.com | UN appeals for calm as Israeli airforce targets Hezbollah

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June 30, 2005

UN appeals for calm as Israeli airforce targets Hezbollah

KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel, June 30 (AFP) - Israel carried out fresh air strikes Thursday targetting Hezbollah fighters who were feared to still be in a disputed border area the day after a deadly flare-up.

The latest raids in the Shebaa Farms district came as the United Nations appealed for calm from all sides and as a new prime minister was named in Lebanon.

Syria dismissed a US assets freeze imposed on two senior officials as a ploy to "divert attention" from what it called the Israeli "aggressions", while Lebanese Information Minister Charles Rizk called for French and US pressure on Israel to quit the disputed zone.

"The purpose of this operation was to rule out the possiblity that any terrorists were still in the area" after Wednesday's attack on an Israeli army post in which one soldier was killed, a military spokeswoman said.

She insisted that the attack took place within the borders of Israel, but the Israeli authorities have regarded the occupied Golan Heights as part of the Jewish state since annexing it in 1981 in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.

The Shebaa Farms were captured from Syria in 1967 along with the strategic plateau but are now claimed by Lebanon with Syrian blessing.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar television confirmed the new raid, saying Israel had fired an air-to-ground missile.

Military sources had earlier said that at least one Hezbollah fighter was possibly killed or injured when the militants approached an Israeli army post in the Shebaa Farms.

However Hezbollah denied there had been a gunfight with Israeli troops or any victims among its fighters.

The latest strike came on the day that Lebanon named anti-Syrian former finance minister Fuad Siniora to form a government following the first parliamentary elections since Damascus ended its three-decade military presence in April.

Israel, which is facing the threat of a new front opening up as it prepares for the Gaza Strip pullout, has urged the Lebanese government to take action to bring their common border under control.

"The Lebanese government must take responsibility for the Israeli-Lebanese border and prevent terrorist organisations ... from inflaming the situation," an Israeli army statement said after Wednesday's attack.

UN special representative for south Lebanon Geir Pederson called for a halt to the Israeli air raids but also called for action from the Lebanese government.

"The Israeli authorities (should) refrain from their air violations of the Blue Line," Pederson said in reference to the line demarcated by the United Nations between Israel and Lebanon after Israel ended its 22-year occupation of the south in May 2000.

Pederson also "called upon the government of Lebanon to extend its control over all of its territory, to exert its monopoly on the use of force and to put an end to all attacks emanating from its territory."

Resolution 1559, approved by the UN Security Council last September, demands the disarmament of Hezbollah's military wing and the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, which is currently patrolled exclusively by its militants.

The Lebanese information minister called on the resolution's sponsors, France and the United States, to pressure Israel to quit the Shebaa Farms if it was serious about seeing Hezbollah disarmed in accordance with the resolution.

"If you really want Hezbollah disarmed, you must first remove the reasons which led Hezbollah to take up arms in the first place," he told the official ANI news agency.

"By doing this, Paris and Washington would give the incoming government arguments for a political solution of this issue," said Rizk, who is part of the outgoing caretaker administration.