960417

Arab ministers meet, angry about Israeli attacks

CAIRO: Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo on Wednesday amid dismay at Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

Lebanon called the extraordinary Arab League meeting in response to six days of cross-border violence by Israeli forces and Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas.

Israeli warplanes and artillery have killed at least 31 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and wounded 143. Hizbollah rockets have wounded 48 people in Israel.

"What's happening in Lebanon now is a threat to the peace process...We support whatever the Lebanese government wants," Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told reporters shortly before the meeting began at Arab League headquarters.

"This Israeli attack, which targets innocent civilians and economic installations in Lebanon, shows that it does not want stable and united Arab countries. It does not want its neighbours to be well," added Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara of Syria, Lebanon's closest ally.

Shara disputed Israel's argument that it was responding to attacks by Hizbollah. "All the Israeli attacks have not been able to reduce the strength of Hizbollah or kill a single individual from Hizbollah," he said.

Foreign ministers from 10 of the league's 22 members are attending the meeting. The other members have sent junior ministers or officials at a lower level.

Arab diplomats expect the ministers to condemn the Israeli operations and demand that Israel comply with U.N. Security Council resolution 425 of 1978, which calls for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

But the violence continued on Wednesday morning.

Lebanese security sources said Israeli fighter jets attacked villages near the southern port of Tyre and pro-Israeli militia sources said Hizbollah also lobbed rockets into the Israeli-held border zone, wounding a woman in the town of Marjayoun, and into northern Israel.

France and the United States have both prepared proposals for a settlement including a ceasefire.

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri said on Tuesday it would be hard to accept the U.S. proposal in its present form.

But his foreign minister, Faris Bouez, arriving in Cairo on Wednesday, kept his options open. "The initiative has shortcomings...It's still under study and needs amendments for it to be acceptable. So we don't reject it but we have reservations about the substance."

Bouez said in Beirut on Tuesday that the U.S. proposal expanded on a 1993 understanding barring attacks on civilians on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The Egyptian government newspaper al-Ahram, reflecting the level of Arab anger, said in an editorial on Wednesday that Israel was killing hopes of peace.

"Israel is killing dozens of innocent civilians, bombing civilian targets at random and threatening to burn all of Lebanon," said the front-page editorial, entitled "Israel's blood-stained peace".

"Anger is sweeping the whole Arab world, in indignation at these savage operations and at the connivance, either by public support or by silence, of some great powers with Israel's plan.

"The Israeli operations...are stabbing peace to death and could destroy everything that has been accomplished on the road to peace," it added.-Reuter