[Jerusalem Post] Michal Lando and Yaakov Katz - UNIFIL soldiers assigned to maintain the cease-fire that ended the Second Lebanon War of 2006 are not carrying out their mandate and are potentially laying the groundwork for another round of violence between Israel and Hizbullah, Israel's outgoing UN ambassador Danny Gillerman said in an interview. "They [UNIFIL] should be much more proactive - more aggressive in going after Hizbullah - in detecting [and] identifying arms depots. They should be going in there, not just relying on Lebanese armed forces to do so, who often work in collusion with Hizbullah," he said. "Within the mandate as it stands today, they can do much more and be more effective, and if they don't, they will have to regret it," he said. "Resolution 1701 was supposed to limit [the] actions of Hizbullah, and prevent it from rearming," said Gillerman. "It did not achieve that. Hizbullah today has rearmed to the point that it is possibly even better equipped than it was before the war. The resolution also imposed an embargo on arms shipments to militias in Lebanon - namely Hizbullah - which was a huge achievement, but that wasn't implemented either."
2008-07-25 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive