Arab FMs to meet in Beirut over Lebanon conflict Posted: 07 August 2006 1154 hrs
BEIRUT : Arab foreign ministers are due to hold an emergency meeting in Beirut to back a seven-point Lebanese plan to put an end to hostilities with Israel. Foreign ministers from Lebanon and the rest of the Arab League as well as the 22-nation body's chief Amr Mussa will hold a meeting in Beirut at 1000 GMT, officials said. The emergency meeting was meant to help end hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah which have left nearly 1,000 killed in Lebanon and about 100 on the Israeli side. Israel launched a massive onslaught on Lebanon after the militant Shiite movement Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 to force an exchange of prisoners. Hezbollah has responded by raining rockets onto northern Israel. The violence has threatened to spiral out of control, and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem warned on his arrival in Beirut on Sunday that Damascus was ready for regional war. Israel has said it has no plans to attack Syria but analysts have expressed fears of a wider conflict after Israel bombed Lebanese border posts close to Syria and also overflew President Bashar al-Assad's palace in northern Syria in June. Muallem also condemned a draft UN resolution seeking to end the violence in Lebanon, which is sponsored by the United States and France, as merely a recipe for more conflict. The draft called for a "full cessation" of fighting, but not for the immediate pullout of Israeli forces from Lebanon. Lebanon on Sunday officially sought changes to the draft, calling for Israeli forces to immediately withdraw from Lebanese territory after any halt to fighting, its UN representative said. Under the proposal, put to an expert-level meeting of the UN Security Council, the UN force in southern Lebanon would hand over control of a key frontier area to Lebanese armed forces within 72 hours of any truce. After talks with Lebanese leaders in Beirut on Sunday, Amr Mussa called UN chief Kofi Annan to ask for an amendment of the draft which would take Lebanese reservations into consideration. An Arab diplomatic source said Mussa asked that the text call for an immediate Israeli troop pullout from southern Lebanon following the end of hostilities, and for the disputed Shebaa Farms to be placed under UN jurisdiction. The move came after Mussa accused the UN Security Council of failing to halt hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. "We were surprised that some great powers were obstructing the ceasefire," Mussa told reporters after meeting Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a key Hezbollah ally. Mussa said the Arab ministerial meeting was particularly meant to back a seven-point peace plan put forward by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. The plan calls for an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the expansion of the existing UN peacekeeping force in the area, the deployment of the Lebanese army to the border and the disarming of Hezbollah guerrillas. - AFP/ir http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/223519/1/.html Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
