Home News Daily news from Lebanon Israel Accuses UNIFIL of Hiding Info about Hizbullah from Security Council

Israel Accuses UNIFIL of Hiding Info about Hizbullah from Security Council

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Written by News Editor

Monday, 28 April 2008

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is intentionally concealing information about Hizbullah activities south of the Litani River to avoid conflict with the Shiite group, senior Israeli sources told Haaretz. They said in the last six months there have been at least four cases in which UNIFIL soldiers identified armed Hizbullah operatives, but did nothing and did not submit full reports on the incidents to the U.N. Security Council. Haaretz said Israeli Defense Forces and Israel's foreign ministry are reportedly very angry about UNIFIL's actions in recent months, particularly about the fact that UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Claudio Graziano is said to be not strictly interpreting his mission. It quoted senior IDF officials as saying lately that Graziano is "presenting half-truths so as to avoid embarrassment and conflict with Hizbullah," and that Resolution 1701 has been increasingly eroded in recent months. A senior government source in Jerusalem told Haaretz that "there is an attempt … in the U.N. to mislead the Security Council and whitewash everything having to do with the strengthening of Hizbullah in southern Lebanon." "The policy of cover-ups and whitewashing will not last long and, hopefully, now that the concealing of information has been revealed, things will change," added the source. Israeli anger reached boiling point over a week ago after the release of a new report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with regard to another Lebanon-related Security Council resolution, 1559, Haaretz wrote. It claimed that the report briefly mentioned an incident that took place last month in which UNIFIL soldiers encountered unidentified armed men, adding that the report included no additional details. A day after the release of the report, Haaretz uncovered that the March incident was a clash between UNIFIL and armed Hizbullah activists. Haaretz said Hizbullah members, driving a truck full of explosives, threatened the Italian UNIFIL battalion with weapons. Instead of using force as required by their mandate, Haaretz wrote, the U.N. soldiers abandoned the site. It quoted a U.N. diplomatic source as saying that senior officials in UNIFIL and in the U.N. Secretariat exerted pressure to make sure the incident is "erased from the report or at least to blur it."

 

 

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