UN council keeps silent on Israel-Lebanon conflict

UNITED NATIONS, July 16 (Reuters) The UN Security Council again rejected pleas that it call for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon after the United States objected, diplomats said.

Washington yesterday argued in closed-door talks that the focus for West Asia diplomacy for now should be on the weekend summit in St Petersburg of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, council diplomats said.

It was the sole member of the 15-nation UN body to oppose any council action at all at this time, they said.

''We would expect much more from the Security Council,'' Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud told reporters after the council meeting, singling out the United States for blame.

While Washington has been very supportive of the Lebanese government in the past, ''when it comes to Israel, it seems things changed,'' Mahmoud said. ''Destruction is still going on, people are still dying ... and here we are impotent.'' The council planned another discussion of the conflict tomorrow, and hoped to soon begin work on a ''substantive'' response to the conflict, said French UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, the council president for July.

Tomorrow meeting would be the council's third since Hizbollah guerrillas crossed over into Israel last week and captured two Israeli soldiers, triggering an intensifying military response by Israeli forces that has been met with a steady rain of Hizbollah missiles into northern Israel.

The Lebanese government called on the Security Council on Thursday to adopt a resolution imposing a cease-fire.

The plea was renewed yesterday by Qatar, the council's sole Arab member.

Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert assured the United Nations that Israeli forces would not interfere in a plan by UN peacekeepers to move Lebanese villagers living along the border with Israel out of the line of fire, UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said.

Olmert's assurances came in yesterday telephone call to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Guehenno said.

Israel's Northern Command had previously warned UN peacekeepers to keep out of a zone several miles wide running along the Lebanese side of the border, he said.

Such an order would have been ''impossible to comply with, unacceptable,'' Guehenno told reporters.

Olmert's assurances cleared the way for the peacekeepers to try to move the civilians today, he said. Arrangements would also have to be worked out with Hizbollah, he added.

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