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Berri Says No Justification For Non-Lebanese Attacks From Lebanon
CAIRO, Jan 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two days after the Israeli army shot dead two Palestinians near the Lebanon-Israel border, Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri said Monday there were no "justifications" for launching any more attacks against Israel by non-Lebanese from his territory.
"There is absolutely no justification for [non-Lebanese] to use southern Lebanon," said Berri in an interview with the French radio RMC.
Berri is the head of the Shi'ite Amal Muslim movement, which played a major role in the 22-year resistance against Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
"Lebanon today ... is against any action outside the framework of the Lebanese people and the Lebanese resistance," Berri said.
"The Lebanese resistance does not need the backing of anyone because there are hundreds of Lebanese mobilized," he added.
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri also expressed his opposition to Palestinian attacks on Israel from Lebanese territory. On Friday, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian activists and wounded a third near the disputed Shebaa Farms area.
A Hezbollah spokesman, however, said Friday's clash was a "legitimate" action aimed at boosting the Palestinian refugees' right of return.
As for Arafat 's promise that all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would remain there Berri expressed his satisfaction with such a pledge saying, "But we need the implementation."
In an interview Monday with the Lebanese An-Nahar daily, Arafat said, "There will be no settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon - I am against it. No Palestinian refugees will remain in Lebanon."
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday on a bill reducing the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon from 5,800 to 4,500 troops. Moreover, it called upon the Lebanese government to send in its army to guard the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Hariri had said a few days back that he refused to send Lebanese troops to serve as border guards for the Jewish state.
The Security Council took their force reduction decision two weeks after U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan urged for U.N. troop reductions, especially after the Lebanese Islamic resistance movement, Hezbollah, expelled the Israeli army from South Lebanon in June.
"It's Lebanon's right and duty to exercise its sovereignty over all of southern Lebanon," wrote Annan last week in a letter to the Security Council stating that 235 U.N. peacekeepers have died in the past twenty years trying to help Beirut "achieve that goal."
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, was established in 1978 to implement a Security Council decision that Israel end its occupation of southern Lebanon.
The U.N. affirmed that Israel, by its withdrawal in June, determined a separation line between its borders with Lebanon, known as the blue line. Nevertheless, Lebanon and Syria say that Israeli forces are still occupying a strip of Lebanese territory, known as Shabaa farms.
"We remain concerned about the ongoing tensions along the borders and urge all parties to exercise restraint and respect the blue line," U.S. ambassador Nancy Soderberg said.
"We have been urging [the Lebanese] to exercise . . . their full authority in the south," she added.
Pragmatically, the Shebaa Farms possesses no fuel deposits or any other resources of global economic value. Locals, however, state that bird hunting was the main source of income for the few people living there.
During its occupation of the area, however, Israel built "a series of strategic hilltop observation posts in the area, [and] erecting a border fence," the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
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