Olmert under fire over leaked Lebanon war report

JERUSALEM, Apr 29 (Reuters) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded stoically today to his reported censure in a Lebanon war inquiry report that could shape his political fate.

The government-appointed Winograd Commission will issue tomorrow interim findings focusing on the first five days of Israel's inconclusive war against Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas last year.

Over the weekend, Channel 10 television said the 160-page document criticised Olmert for ''misguided and rash judgment'' in launching the air, sea and land campaign after Hezbollah gunmen seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Channel 10 said the panel of two jurists, two former generals and a public policy expert did not call for Olmert to step down. The commission made no comment on the leaks, silence political commentators took as confirmation of their accuracy.

''We cannot talk about what has been leaked. We will wait for the report, read it, study it and then we'll respond,'' Olmert was quoted by the YNet news Web site as telling cabinet members.

Olmert's aides said he had no intention of resigning. The prime minister has argued Israel made strategic gains in the war in a ceasefire deal that banished Hezbollah from its frontier strongholds and beefed up a UN peacekeeper force.

Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets into Israel during the war, sending a million people into shelters in attacks the Middle East's mightiest military failed to stop. Olmert's approval rating has since plunged to single digits in opinion polls.

''There was no prime minister. There was no government. We were screaming for help,'' said Suzanne Peretz, a spokeswoman for the Kiryat Shmona municipality, a northern Israeli town hard hit by Hezbollah fire.

STAYING ON Public dissatisfaction with Olmert seems certain to mount should the official findings prove critical and likely diminish his ability to pursue peacemaking with the Palestinians which the United States has been trying to encourage.

''The verdict will be given tomorrow. The sentence will be handed down later, by the public,'' political commentator Ben Caspit wrote in Maariv.

''He has to accept responsibility. The people deserve better,'' said Gideon Saar, a senior member of the main opposition party, Likud, whose leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led recent Israeli popularity polls.

Maariv and Israel's largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, opened the Israeli working week by putting a stamp of disapproval on Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz, whom Channel 10 said was also criticised in the report.

Under a stock photo of a glum Olmert, head in hand, a Maariv headline read: ''Failed''. A headline on Yedioth Ahronoth's front page said: ''Misguided judgment''.

The fighting killed 117 Israeli soldiers and 41 civilians and some 1,200 people, including an estimated 270 Hezbollah guerrillas.

Israel was criticised abroad for the devastation caused to Lebanon's civilian infrastructure.

REUTERS KK KN1624