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Israel: UNIFIL Is Hiding Information about Hizbullah from Security Council

[Ha'aretz] Barak Ravid - UNIFIL is intentionally concealing information about Hizbullah activities south of the Litani River in Lebanon to avoid conflict with the group, senior sources in Jerusalem have 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 UN Security Council. A new report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with regard to Security Council Resolution 1559 briefly mentioned an incident at the beginning of March in which UNIFIL soldiers encountered unidentified armed men, and included no additional details. The incident described in the report had actually been a clash between UNIFIL and armed Hizbullah activists, driving a truck full of explosives, who threatened the Italian UNIFIL battalion with weapons. Instead of using force as required by their mandate, the UN soldiers abandoned the site. A diplomatic source at the UN said senior officials in UNIFIL and in the UN Secretariat brought heavy pressure to bear to have the incident erased from the report or at least to blur it.
2008-04-28 01:00:00
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