Olmert will urge Bush to prevent smuggling of weapons to Hizbullah
Prime minister expected to raise issue of Hizbullah rearmament during meeting with US president in Washington next week, demand deployment of international force along Lebanon-Syria border
Israel has expressed its concern over the rearming of Hizbullah and the incessant smuggling of weapons into Lebanon. The issue is expected to be raised during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s meeting in Washington with US President George W. Bush, scheduled for next Tuesday.
Israel will demand that Bush work toward the deployment of an international peace-keeping force along the Lebanon-Syria border to prevent the smuggling.
The peace-keeping forces mandate in Lebanon is set to be renewed in two months’ time, and Israel is looking to take advantage of the opportunity to change the situation on the ground, as Hizbullah has improved its capabilities since before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War.
According to one report, the Lebanese group is in possession of some 20,000 rockets that threaten Israel’s home front. Some of the weapons are more advanced and have a longer range than the Zilzal and al-Fajr missiles in Hizbullah's possession last July.
The weapons, many of them manufactured by the Iranian military industry, are transported to Lebanon via Damascus.
Last week Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is participating in routine bilateral strategic talks with the United States warned that Hizbullah is arming “with missiles that could hit central and even southern Israel".
“The organization never left south Lebanon,” he said during a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “It is not positioned on the border, but its men are situated in structures and parks.”
'No one stopping them'
Neither the international peace-keeping forces nor the Lebanese army are doing anything to stop the arms transfers. Israel claims that this violates UN Resolution 1701, which was signed at the end of the Second Lebanon War and imposes a weapons embargo on Hizbullah.
A senior diplomatic official said that the embargo is not being enforced due to the phrasing of a certain clause in the UN Security Council decision. The clause states that the Lebanese prime minister can ask for international forces to deploy along the border with Syrian. President Fuad Siniora, however, is in no hurry to do so.
Lacking the power to amend the decision, Israel will ask the United States to use its influence on Siniora to have him deploy peace-keeping forces along the border as one of the conditions of renewing the UNIFIL forces mandate in August. This offer was raised during strategic discussions last week and is currently being examined by the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.
Olmert is likely to point out to Bush the success of the German navy forces in preventing weapons smuggling by sea in asking that the international forces do more to prevent Hizbullah's rearmament.
London's The Sunday Times reported Sunday that Hizbullah has managed to rearm with thousands of missiles, which are hidden around south Lebanon.
Security officials assessed that since last August, enormous amounts of weapons were smuggled to Hizbullah forces, many of them Russian-made. The terror group holds an estimated 20,000 missiles plus anti-tank missiles, short- and long-range rockets, and mines.
Various intelligence officials in Israel said that Israel's main concern was over Hizbullah possessing a long-range missile called the Fatah-110, which could reach Tel Aviv.
