France’s U.N. delegation broke ranks with the United States and joined Arab nations in calling for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from Lebanon, it was reported yesterday.
The United States and France are at loggerheads over ways to ease Lebanese fears that Israel would win too much from a U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution, Fox News said.
The diplomatic wrangling came as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his country would likely sever relations with Israel in protest of its military campaign against Lebanon.
Chavez, a harsh critic of the United States who frequently expresses sympathy for the Palestinians, had ordered the withdrawal last week of Venezuela’s ambassador in Israel.
“We have withdrawn our diplomatic representation from the state of Israel and they have also withdrawn their ambassador,” he said.
In New York, American and French diplomats considered two proposals they hoped would accommodate Lebanon’s demands while trying to breathe new life into diplomatic efforts to end the fighting, Fox News reported.
Both countries agree that the resolution should support Lebanon’s offer Monday to deploy 15,000 soldiers to monitor a buffer zone in the south, now partly occupied by Israeli troops.
But the French side with Arab demands that no international force be deployed in the region. The United States and Israel favor it.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Lebanese forces “would need to be supported by international forces” because Lebanon’s army isn’t strong enough to subdue Hezbollah by itself.
“They are not, at this point, a robust enough entity to be able to, on their own, exercise total control of that southern area of Lebanon. That’s why you have the need for an international force,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Omert said, “The faster we leave south Lebanon, the happier we will be, especially if we have achieved our goals.”
He added that Lebanese troops should be accompanied by a strong international force and that Hezbollah, whose guerrillas have been battling Israel for 28 days, must be disarmed.
The impasse came on a day of these developments in the conflict:
* Israeli gunboats shelled Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp early today, killing at least one person and wounding three others, Israeli officials said.
The shelling was the first time Israel attacked the camp since the fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah began more than four weeks ago.
Israeli gunboats fired two shells. One landed in the Ein el-Hilweh camp, located on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon, and the other slammed into the city’s amusement park.
* Israeli air raids killed 14 people and wounded 23 in the southern Lebanese village of Ghaziyeh.
The bombs fell five minutes after a funeral procession of 1,500 mourners had passed on its way to bury 15 people killed in a raid on the village Monday.
The first missile struck a building, killing one person and wounding five. The blast was close enough to send some mourners screaming, “Allah Akbar!” (“God is great!”). Some broke away from the procession, while others continued on.
Half an hour later, Israeli warplanes staged four more bombing runs, destroying two buildings. Another 13 people were killed and 18 wounded.
* Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni ripped into Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, who wept Monday when he described his country’s plight.
“Yesterday I saw the tears of Siniora. We all cry over our dead, whether in public or in private,” she said. “This is the place to tell him to wipe away his tears and start working to create a better future, a more normal future for those civilians for whom he is crying.”
With Post Wire Services