Israel to quit Lebanon border village -officials

JERUSALEM, Dec 3 (Reuters) Israel decided today to hand over to UN peacekeepers responsibility for a village on the Lebanese border, government officials said, a step that would complete an Israeli pullout from Lebanon.

Nearly all Israeli forces in southern Lebanon withdrew in October, two months after a 34-day war against Hezbollah guerrillas ended in a truce.

But Israeli soldiers remained in the divided village of Ghajar with the declared aim of stopping smuggling and infiltration. The village straddles the border between Lebanon and land Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 West Asia.

UNIFIL, a peacekeeping force monitoring the ceasefire, has said Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon would be complete once its troops left the northern part of Ghajar.

Israel's security cabinet, which brings together top ministers and sometimes draws on senior army commanders, voted unanimously to transfer control of Ghajar to UNIFIL, the sources said.

There was no immediate announcement of a date for the move.

Senior Israeli officials hope the pullback from Ghajar can shore up the position of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, whose US-backed government is under pressure from Hezbollah.

With UNIFIL in charge of the village, Israeli troops would withdraw and fence off the community from the south, Israel's Channel Two television said yesterday.

That would leave the several hundred Druze Muslims who live on the Israeli side of the town and carry Israeli identification papers under UN protection and essentially residing on Lebanese soil.

A pullout could also open a broader debate about the surrounding Shebaa Farms, a stretch of territory controlled by Israel that Lebanon claims as its own but which the United Nations recognises as belonging to Syria.

REUTERS PB RK2110