Donors pledge 940 million dollars for Lebanon, UN chief in Syria
by Pia Ohlin
STOCKHOLM - Donor nations pledged 940 million dollars in aid on Thursday to help Lebanon rebuild smashed infrastructure, shelter the homeless and remove unexploded ordnance after a blistering 34-day Israeli bombing offensive.
“An amount exceeding 900 million dollars was pledged at the Stockholm conference,” Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson told delegates, later updating the sum to 940 million dollars.
Including previous contributions, the amount pledged so far for Lebanon’s acute needs totals 1.2 billion dollars, Eliasson said, later telling reporters that the United States, the European Union and Gulf states had been the most generous donors at Thursday’s meeting.
“This conference has met its objectives by a wide margin,” he said. Swedish organisers had originally hoped to raise 500 million dollars.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora told the representatives of almost 50 countries and a dozen organisations in attendance that the cost of the damage wrought by Israel’s offensive would run to billions of dollars, but any aid effort would be undermined unless Israel lifted its blockade.
“The direct damage from this last invasion to our infrastructure and to our public and private property is now running into the billions of dollars,” Siniora told representatives from the US and European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries.
Losses in economic output, jobs, and the long-term direct and indirect costs to the economy including lost revenues in tourism, agriculture and industry are expected to be “billions more”, he added.
Siniora said that unless Israel’s “humiliating” air and sea blockade on Lebanon was lifted, “the recovery process, including this conference today… will be severely undermined.”
“If we are to have real peace and stability in the Middle East, the root causes of this war must be addressed,” he said.
He urged the United Nations Security Council to take a leading role to find lasting peace in the region, and called on Israel to recognize Palestinian statehood and “withdraw from all the Arab lands it occupies.”
UN undersecretary general Mark Malloch Brown called for an immediate end to the blockade and a political solution to the underlying causes of the conflict.
“Otherwise aid risks substituting for the real oxygen of recovery: private investment, which will stay away if the risk of conflict remains high,” he said.
The first donors’ conference to be held since the conflict broke out in July raised money to provide shelter for those left homeless by the Israeli bombing, access to medical care, repair infrastructure including water and electricity supplies, and remove unexploded ordnance.
UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland has accused Israel of mounting a “completely immoral” cluster bomb blitz just before the ceasefire went into effect that left as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets in south Lebanon.
Eliasson said the conference’s political objective was “to send the message that we want to have a strong Lebanon.”
It “is not only in the interest of the Lebanese people… but also of the region. I think Israel and other neighbours have much to gain from a stable and prosperous Lebanon,” he said.
Lebanon’s prime minister said the money raised on Thursday would be spent transparently and rejected the idea that aid to southern Lebanon, where the Shiite militia Hezbollah is based, would end up in Hezbollah pockets.
“This idea that it will be siphoned in one way or another to Hezbollah is entirely, completely, a fallacy and is not true,” he said.
“The assistance will be channelled through government agencies and this will go to the needy people directly. It will not have any intermediary in any way,” he said.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, some 300,000 people are still displaced, or seven percent of the Lebanese population. About one million people had to flee their homes because of the conflict.
Copyright 2005 AFP. All rights reserved.
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran ‘ignores nuclear deadline’
Iran has failed to stop enriching uranium despite a UN deadline calling for a halt to its nuclear programme, the UN nuclear agency says.
The findings are set out in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), leaked to the media.
The IAEA is due to submit the report to the UN Security Council later, which could pave the way for sanctions.
Earlier, Iran’s president said Tehran would not yield to international pressure to halt its programme.
Iran shows no sign of freezing its nuclear activities, diplomatic sources quote the IAEA report as saying.
It started one new round of enrichment only days ahead of the 31 August UN deadline, diplomats said.
Iran defiant
US President George W Bush warned that there would be “consequences” if Iran failed to meet the deadline.
“It is time for Iran to make a choice,” he told a meeting of US veterans in Salt Lake City.
Western powers accuse Iran of trying covertly to develop a nuclear bomb.
But Iran maintains it has a right to a nuclear programme which, it says, has a purely civilian aspect.
“Iran will not back down an inch… and will not accept being deprived of its rights,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech.
Aoun: Saniora Will ‘Pay the Price of his Stubbornness’ and Will be ‘Forced to Leave Quickly’
Gen. Michel Aoun criticized Prime Minister Fouad Saniora’s refusal to resign, saying his government is bound to collapse any time, As Safir reported Thursday.“Saniora will pay for his stubbornness and this could happen any time…then he won’t even have time to gather his belongings because he will find himself forced to leave quickly,” Aoun told the daily.Aoun’s comments came after Saniora said at a press conference Wednesday that his government will not resign despite calls by the opposition to do so.
“As long as the cabinet enjoys parliament’s support, democracy will continue and the government won’t resign,” Saniora told reporters before heading to Stockholm to attend a donors’ conference on Lebanon there. “I tell Saniora that a government reshuffle should have taken place at the end of 2005…but that never happened,” Aoun said. He said Saniora’s government can no longer depend on outside support to stay in power. “You have to know that you can no longer rely on outside support as your government is weak in all aspects,” Aoun told the daily. “We have warned of the dangers of the government’s persistence. Since you didn’t feel concerned, we now retain the option of choosing the right time to achieve the desired change.” The leader of the Free Patriotic Movement also took a jab at the parliamentary majority, which he said it fears a constitutional vacuum in case the current government resigns. “This fictitious majority cannot rule forever,” he said. He also described the government as a “government of destruction and economic collapse.” “Those who are responsible for devastation cannot build a country and save the economy,” he said. |
| Beirut, 31 Aug 06 |
Sky News: Iran Set To Defy UN Deadline Day
Iran’s President has vowed the country “will never abandon” its nuclear programme as a United Nations deadline for it to stop draws near.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted atomic technology was the Muslim state’s right.
Western nations fear the programme is a smokescreen to develop nuclear weapons.
The UN Security Council set a deadline of today for Tehran to halt uranium enrichment or face possible sanctions.
But Mr Ahmadinejad said: “The Iranian nation will never abandon its obvious right to peaceful nuclear technology.”
Tehran insists it only wants nuclear technology to cope with booming electricity demands.
But it hid sensitive research from UN inspectors for almost 20 years and has hindered UN investigations since.
Uranium enrichment can be used to fuel power stations and help make nuclear warheads.
The president said: “Their (the West’s) pretext and claim is that Iran’s peaceful nuclear knowledge might be diverted one day. It is a big lie.
“Iran has never been, is not and will not be an aggressor and violator of others’ rights. But they should know that the Iranian nation will not yield to threats and pressure.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is to report to the council today.
He will certify whether Iran has suspended “all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development”.
The US military has assessed Iran is five to eight years away from mastering the means to build a nuclear bomb, the Washington Times reported.
Italy warns Syria on arms to Lebanon
Lebanonwire
ROME - Italy’s foreign minister said the international community would “not stand by and watch” if Syria sent arms to Lebanon, news agency Ansa reported on Wednesday.
“In Syria they should also know that if arms arrive from Syria … the international community will know about it and won’t stand by and watch,” Massimo D’Alema said in a radio interview, Ansa reported.
Italy is contributing 3,000 troops to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon that is aimed at turning a truce between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas into a sustainable ceasefire.
Its contingent is the largest so far, and Italy is expected to take over command of the mission from France in 2007.
“We ask Syria for cooperation,” Ansa quoted D’Alema as saying.
In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Prime Minister Romano Prodi spoke to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad about possible ways to solve the crisis in Lebanon and in the Middle East in general. (Reuters)
Syrian group threatens to kidnap troops
DAMSCUS - A previously unknown group threatened Wednesday to abduct Israeli soldiers to swap them for Syrian prisoners in Israel.
In a statement faxed to foreign news agencies in Damascus, a group calling itself the Men of the National Syrian Resistance threatened to “take the necessary measures” to secure the release of 16 Syrians jailed in Israel.
It listed the names of four men it said have been detained in Israel for 22 years. The group said the men had been charged with “resisting Israeli occupation in the Golan.”
“The continuing detention of our comrades makes us exert all-out efforts to secure their release,” the statement said. The group called theirs a “humanitarian and just demand.”
Referring to Hizbullah guerrillas, whose July 12 capture of two IDF soldiers sparked a 34-day war with Israel, the statement said: “The Lebanese model, the model of Hizbullah, is not so far from us concerning implementation and preparations to release our detainees.”
US Treasury Designates Key Hizballah Fundraising Organization
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The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated the Islamic Resistance Support Organization (IRSO), a key Hizballah fundraising organization. “While some terrorist-supporting charities try to obscure their support for violence, IRSO makes no attempt to hide its true colors. IRSO’s fundraising materials present donors with the option of sending funds to equip Hizballah fighters or to purchase rockets that Hizballah uses to target civilian populations,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) “IRSO works to inflict suffering rather than alleviate it.” IRSO was named today pursuant to Executive Order 13224, which is aimed at disrupting the financial lines supporting terrorism. This action shuts IRSO out of the U.S. financial system by prohibiting transactions with the organization by U.S. persons, as well as freezing any assets IRSO may have under U.S. jurisdiction. Hizballah uses IRSO to solicit donations in support of its terrorist activities. Specifically, IRSO solicits funds for Hizballah through advertisements broadcast on Hizballah’s al-Manar television station. IRSO has identified itself to prospective donors as one and the same as Hizballah. Solicitation materials distributed by IRSO inform prospective donors that funds will be used to purchase sophisticated weapons and conduct operations. Indeed, donors can choose from a series of projects to contribute to, including, supporting and equipping fighters and purchasing rockets and ammunition. Identifying Information Islamic Resistance Support Organization Location: Beirut, Lebanon Background on Hizballah Most recently, in July 2006 Hizballah precipitated a violent conflict that resulted in scores of civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon. On January 25, 1995, the Annex to the Executive Order 12947 listed Hizballah as a Specially Designated Terrorist (SDT). The Department of State designated Hizballah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997. Additionally, on October 31, 2001, Hizballah was designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224. |
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| Source: US Treasury | ||
DEBKAfile - Israel’s Intelligence Chiefs Warn Lebanon War Is Relocating to Gaza
Israel’s intelligence chiefs have formed a new lobby to put their warnings in the public domain when they see the Olmert government failing to properly address grave security threats to the country.
The first to speak out was the Shin Bet director, Yuval Diskin.
He represented the heads of AMAN-military intelligence and the Mosad when he revealed to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee Tuesday, Aug. 29, that Palestinian terrorists, notably Hamas, were employing Hizballah’s Lebanon tactics and building a Katyusha deployment, bunker network and anti-tank missile arsenal in the Gaza Strip. The northern West Bank, he said, had been taken over by Hizballah agents and radical Jihad Islami terrorists since its evacuation by Israel at the same time as the Gaza Strip last summer.
This was the Shin Bet director’s first appearance as spokesman of the new intelligence grouping.
It is made up of the heads of the three intelligence services, Diskin, AMAN’s Maj.-Gen Amos Yadlin and Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, as well as the counter-terror departments of these services and of the IDF Southern Command.
In the wake of the Lebanon war, these security chiefs have resolved to stand guard over Israel’s national security interests against any strategic misjudgments of prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Amir Peretz and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the heads of the lobby are convinced that the Palestinian menace to Israel is as a great as Hizballah’s in Lebanon and becoming more acute.
They are campaigning for the Israeli army to reoccupy the Gaza-Egyptian border strip known as the Philadelphi route and propose a security zone one kilometer wide to run from Kerem Shalom to the Mediterranean and cut the Gaza Strip off from Sinai.
Since Israeli troops departed the Philadelphi border enclave last summer – with the rest of the Gaza Strip - weapons smuggling and terrorist traffic between Egypt and Gaza has been flourishing.
Diskin’s portrayal of Sinai as a paradise for international weapons traffickers and a strategic threat to Israel was timed to caution Olmert against further concessions on Lebanon to the visiting UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, in consideration of the strong Hizballah-Palestinian interchanges and reciprocity.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources reveal: Israel’s security chiefs have learned of a decision by Hizballah to keep its head down in S. Lebanon for the time being, while secretly opening two new anti-Israel fronts in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. This transposition of Hizballah’s war against Israel to the Palestinian arena has begun to materialize.
Three times as many Hizballah officers are traveling to the Gaza Strip by sea as before the war and deliveries of weapons systems have doubled, with Iranian support. Very large quantities of Katyusha rockets and anti-tank missiles are pouring into the Gaza Strip together with hundreds of RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenades and Grad rockets.
Intelligence leaders are warning the prime minister that if this influx is not scotched forthwith, southern Israel will find itself face to face with a second Hizballah front ready to go active in the second half of October.
The Hizballah master plan consists of three parts:
1. Its fighting units with the help of the Lebanese army (40% of which are Shiites) are pretending to remove themselves with their weapons from South Lebanon. Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora happily announced Tuesday that Hizballah had enabled the national army to intercept an arms consignment from Syria in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley. In Tyre, Hizballah fighters surrendered their weapons to Lebanese troops.
Nasrallah will allow a deceptive calm to reign as UN forces move into position, to satisfy them that Security Council resolution 1701 is being upheld, including the institution of an arms-free and militia-free zone in the south. It will last until Hizballah and its Tehran masters are ready for the next round.
2. This calm will contrast meanwhile with the opening of a Hizballah-Hamas front on Israel’s southwest border to replicate the Hizballah rocket offensive against northern Israel which was halted by the UN-brokered ceasefire two weeks ago. Israel’s Negev communities will be targeted instead of Galilee. But Israel’s hands for retaliating against Hizballah will be tied by the presence of the international force in Lebanon.
3. Olmert is sternly warned by Israel’s security chiefs on no account to buy the security arrangements he and his predecessors accepted for Israel’s southern border last year. Neither the Egyptian police contingents nor the European border inspectors have honored agreements signed at the time and caught a single terrorist or stopped a single weapons delivery smuggled in from Sinai to Gaza.
Diskin and Co. see the same pattern taking shape in south Lebanon.
He stressed to the lawmakers in Jerusalem that he felt bound to lay all this intelligence data before them in detail so that the intelligence community would not be blamed after the fact with failing to warn the country of the hazards in store, as it was after the Lebanon war.
Israel will not lift blockade of Lebanon before UNIFIL deployed - Haaretz - Israel News
Defense Minister Amir Peretz informed visiting UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday that the air and naval blockade of Lebanon would continue until UNIFIL and the Lebanese army were in a position to impose an arms embargo on the transfer of arms to Hezbollah from Iran and Syria, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1701.A diplomatic source told Haaretz Tuesday that while Annan had publicly expressed reservations over the ongoing blockade, the UN quietly recognized that the blockade had to continue until UNIFIL forces completed their deployment along the Lebanon-Syrian border.
Annan said he spoke with Peretz about lifting the blockade “as soon as possible in order to allow Lebanon to go on with normal commercial activities and also rebuild its economy.”
Meanwhile, it appears Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government is in no hurry to see an end to the blockage, fearing that its lifting would allow the flow of arms to Hezbollah from Syria to resume.In a meeting with Annan Tuesday, Peretz explained Israel’s position and presented evidence that Syria and Iran would continue in their efforts to replenish Hezbollah’s missile arsenal.
Israel has promised the UN chief that it would ensure the blockade was flexible enough to allow humanitarian aid to flow to Lebanon and facilitate its reconstruction.
Peretz also said that “Israel will pull out once there is a reasonable level of forces there.”
After the meeting with Peretz, Annan appealed for all sides to work together to ensure the peace holds and “not risk another explosion in six years or 20 years.”
In meetings between Israel and the UN, officials decided to establish an operations headquarter in New York to support UNIFIL. The headquarters will be supported by a logistics center in Cyprus, and its operations will be facilitated by the appointment of liaison officers in Beirut and Tel Aviv.
Israel also informed the UN that it would not agree to the participation of troops from Malaysia and Bangladesh in the reconstituted UNIFIL mission, nor that of any other countries that had voiced support for Hezbollah in the course of the war.
Meanwhile, news reports from Turkey suggest that a decision to participate in the peacekeeping force is likely.
Italy, the largest contributor to UNIFIL, has announced that it will deploy 1,000 soldiers in southern Lebanon within the next 48 hours, joining the 2,000-man UNIFIL.
The blockade over Lebanon and the release of the abducted IDF soldiers is expected to dominate the agenda in meetings between Annan and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Why did Armored Corps fail in Lebanon? Ynetnews
Hanan Greenberg
Published: 08.30.06
Why did the safest tank in the world not withstand the second Lebanon war? Too many times during the recent war, the man in the tank was defeated. The Armored Corps is examining itself, and revealing that the failure derives from budgets cuts, but also from improper use of the tanks in enemy territory, as a result of inexperience of soldiers in the field.
Fifty Israel Defense Forces tanks were damaged during the 34 day war in Lebanon , 30 soldiers and officers from the corps were killed and more than 100 were injured, including two battalion commanders. These are the statistics from the recent conflict.
Was it possible to have decreased the number of casualties? Subsequent investigations exposing details of earlier preparations underscore this question.
A senior defense establishment official told Ynet: “Some 350 to 400 tanks took part in the battles in Lebanon, and we can already posit that they stood against a few thousand antitank missiles, most of them with excellent penetration capacities.”
According to the official, “it is possible to see from this that Hizbullah operatives were familiar with the tanks, their characteristics, they knew when and where to shoot in order to inflict the most damage.”
Conditions in the armored corps prior to the war were not the best: many soldiers dealt with day-to-day security issues outside of the tanks, instead of undergoing significant field training in the tanks, similar to what they underwent in Lebanon.
Additionally, the corps did not receive top priority among senior defense establishment officials. Budget cuts took a heavy toll on armored units. According to the official, the armored vehicles were not used properly.
“In the battles in Lebanon, the tanks did not move and shoot. They remained ’static’. Instead of taking advantages of the tank’s many capabilities, they underscored the tank’s weakness, leading to heavy damages,” said another senior official, who stated that the capabilities of the IDF’s newest tank – the Merkava-4 – were barely utilized in the war.
“Our tanks are the most armored in the world, but there’s no such thing as 100 percent protected. Only if you take advantage of their capabilities, can you ensure minimal damages,” he explained.
The conditions for the armored corps were so harsh that the official referred to the tanks as “a person with one hand tied behind his back that turns his cheek to be slapped. Then people ask why he was hurt.”
No budget, no smoke shield
Another depressing statistic: Twenty-two tanks sustained hits that penetrated their steal armor (in ten of the tanks, there were 23 fatalities; in the rest, severe damage was caused to the vehicle). Forty-four percents of the tanks hit by missiles had their armor penetrated. During the first Lebanon War , this happened to 47 percent of the tanks and in the Yom Kippur war, 60 percent.
In the last two days of the war, in the battles in Wadi Sluki and Marjayoun, 14 tanks were hit. The IDF decided that five of the tanks could not restore five of these tanks, two of which had been damaged by underbelly explosives (one of them a Merkava-4) and three of which had been demolished by antitank missiles.
In addition to cuts in the Armored Corps’ procurement budget (down from NIS 1 billion to some NIS 750 million – about USD 170 million), many of the tank systems ‘disappeared.’ For example, the mortar shells field. The launching barrel remained, but no shells were purchased.
In addition, reserve soldiers called up to the war were astonished to discover that they are meant to enter Lebanon without a smoke shield in the tank. Shielding the area where the tank is stationed makes it possible to disguise it and prevent the enemy from firing on it. Due to the budgetary cuts, this option was prevented from the soldiers in the field.
Gen. Michel Aoun criticized Prime Minister Fouad Saniora’s refusal to resign, saying his government is bound to collapse any time, As Safir reported Thursday.“Saniora will pay for his stubbornness and this could happen any time…then he won’t even have time to gather his belongings because he will find himself forced to leave quickly,” Aoun told the daily.Aoun’s comments came after Saniora said at a press conference Wednesday that his government will not resign despite calls by the opposition to do so.
