20000213

Israel leaves Lebanon talks after new death

NAQOURA(Lebanon): Israel on Friday walked out of a five-nation meeting called to stem the violence in Lebanon after Hizbollah guerrillas killed their seventh Israeli soldier in less than three weeks.

The Israeli delegation said Prime Minister Ehud Barak had ordered them out because of the guerrilla attack on the Israeli post in occupied south Lebanon. Washington denounced Hizbollah and said Syria must curb its activities.

But Lebanon said Israeli delegates had refused even before the death to meet Syrian and Lebanese representatives, despite four hours of mediation by the French and U.S. monitors.

"Everybody came but after some shuttling back and forth, the Israeli delegation left without a formal meeting being held," said another source close to the talks.

The Hizbollah attack on an Israeli post at the Crusader-era Beaufort Castle killed one Israeli soldier and wounded two others, according to sources in Israel's local militia, the South Lebanon Army.

It drew swift retaliation by Israel's air force. At least five further air strikes on suspected guerrilla targets were witnessed in the early hours of darkness, including one by a helicopter aiming at the area near the earlier attack on the Israeli post.

Lebanese Prime Minister Selim al-Hoss, blaming Israel for the failed Naqoura meeting, appealed in a statement for the United States to prevent Israeli attacks on civilian targets such as the power plants struck on Tuesday.

But Barak said on television in Israel the Jewish state's 22-year involvement in Lebanon was nearing an end.

"Within four and a half months, I am determined to put an end to this tragedy in Lebanon ... and to bring the boys home to the international border."

He has maintained that the withdrawal will be in the context of a peace agreement but -- with peace talks now frozen has not said what will happen if Syria and Lebanon remain officially in a state of war with Israel.

While delegates were at the U.N. base in Naquoura, inside the occupied zone, guerrillas of the pro-Syrian Amal movement an active but less effective force fighting the occupation lobbed mortar bombs at a nearby Israeli post, the group said.

The United States had called a meeting of the April Understanding committee, established to oversee rules enacted after a 1996 Israeli offensive killed about 200 Lebanese, in hopes of putting a line under the worst violence to rock Lebanon since last June. Israel bombed three power stations this week and injured 20 civilians.

The Understanding banned attacks from or at civilian targets but did not restrict attacks on combatants.

Israel violated it by destroying the power plants in reprisal for the deaths of Israeli soldiers, but said Hizbollah had violated it first by firing from villages.

The White House said in advance of the failed meeting that its priority was moving beyond the current fighting and encouraging a resumption of Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

But after the Israeli death, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin in Washington said the attack was "a deliberate attempt by Hizbollah to wreck the prospects for peace in the region."

Rubin supported Israel's accusation that Hizbollah had violated the 1996 rules by firing repeatedly from civilian areas and said Syria, the main power in Lebanon, clearly had influence with the guerrillas.

"We've told them they need to exercise that influence and at this point the evidence is clear. They need to exercise that influence more effectively," Rubin said.

But in a statement in Beirut, Hizbollah, the most powerful of the groups trying to drive Israel from territory it occupies in south Lebanon, denied having fired from civilian areas and said it would continue to attack.

The rising violence raised international fears for the survival of Syrian-Israeli talks, which resumed in December after a 45-month break only to stall again over Syrian demands for an Israeli commitment to give up the occupied Golan Heights.-Reuters