By BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the New York Sun
New York Sun
November 30, 2005
UNITED NATIONS - As U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis increased pressure on Syria yesterday in Vienna, Israel called on Secretary-General Annan to avoid meetings with Hezbollah officials. The Iranian and Syrian-backed terrorist organization attacked Israel last week partly in an attempt to deflect attention from the Mehlis investigation.
Two days before Hezbollah began shelling northern Israeli towns last Monday, the top U.N. political official, Undersecretary-General Ibrahim Gambari, met in Beirut with two Hezbollah officials - Lebanese Cabinet minister Mohammed Fnesh, and the organization's "spiritual leader," Sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah.
Late last week, Prime Minister Sharon wrote Mr. Annan, requesting that the secretary-general shun similar contacts in the future, a U.N. diplomat who saw the Sharon letter but asked not to be identified said yesterday. Mr. Sharon also called on Lebanon to deploy its forces in its southern region and disarm Hezbollah as demanded by the U.N. Security Council, the diplomat said.
Israeli Cabinet ministers refused to meet Mr. Gambari when he visited Jerusalem during his first tour of the Middle East since Mr. Annan named him as head of the political department in June.
All "contacts in Lebanon were appropriate," Mr. Gambari told The New York Sun through a spokesman yesterday. He insisted that the meetings, including those with Hezbollah officials, were "consistent with the United Nations' overreaching goals of working with Lebanon to ensure its full independence, sovereignty, and security."
As part of its resolution 1559, the Security Council has demanded that Lebanese militias lay down their weapons. Hezbollah's spokesmen have refused to adhere to that resolution. Mr. Annan and Secretary of State Rice said previously that ultimately, armed militias cannot take part in the political process in the Middle East's transformation to democracy.
Reflecting ambivalence inside the State Department, the Bush administration did not comment yesterday on Mr. Gambari's Hezbollah meeting. "I'd like to get all the facts before I say anything," America's U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, told the Sun.
According to video footage released by Hezbollah, the attack on Israeli towns, the fiercest since the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, was meant as a diversion tactic to allow the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Analysts in Jerusalem believe that Syria was involved, and that the country's government thought Israeli retaliation would deflect attention from the investigation of Mr. Mehlis, the German investigator charged by the Security Council with probing the February assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
This week, Damascus also tried to discredit Mr. Mehlis, who was scheduled to begin a set of interviews with five Syrian suspects in Vienna yesterday. Mr. Mehlis had named the Syrian officials - including President al-Assad's brother, Maher, and his brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat - relying in part on a Syrian witness, Hosam Taher Hosam.
Appearing on government-controlled Syrian television Monday, Mr. Hosam retracted his testimony and accused the Hariri family and Mr. Mehlis of bribing him to extract the damaging testimony. In a press release yesterday, Mr. Mehlis said that Mr. Hosam approached the U.N. investigators last June, identifying himself as a Syrian intelligence official.
According to the release, Mr. Mehlis has obtained a written statement from Mr. Hosam, saying, "I have not been threatened or forced to come here, nor have I been offered any promises or incentives to do so." At several points during his testimony, Mr. Hossam "expressed fear" that his family could be harmed by "Syrian security element," the release said, adding that the investigating team never did or will pay for testimony.
