Security Council Urges Action on Illegal Arms
By Benny Avni
April 19, 2007
The New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/52791
UNITED NATIONS — As Secretary-General Ban finalized his plans for a trip to Damascus, the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday night called on the United Nations to report on the smuggling of illicit weapons between Syria and Lebanon.
The statement from the council on Tuesday amounts to a recognition that the rearming of Hezbollah has emerged as the most blatant unresolved issue related to Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the war in Lebanon last summer between the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Shiite organization and Israel, diplomats here say.
In the statement, the council expressed serious concern at mounting information by Israel and another state of illegal movements of arms across the Lebanese-Syrian border in violation of resolution 1701. It also called on Mr. Ban to dispatch, at the earliest, in close liaison with the Lebanese Government, an independent mission to fully assess the monitoring of the border and report back to the council.
The United Nations now plans to send a small team of experts in border security and military affairs to prepare the report.
In a trip to the region last month, Mr. Ban presented Lebanese authorities with photographic evidence that he had received from Israel showing truck convoys loaded with weapons traveling across the Syrian border. Mr. Ban followed that act — confronting Arab leaders with Israeli intelligence was an unprecedented move for a U.N. secretary-general — with a call for better border monitoring.
I don't know of any intelligence service that doesn't know about the rearming of Hezbollah, a senior U.N-based diplomat who asked not to be identified told The New York Sun yesterday. The diplomat added that intelligence services believe that Hezbollah is now stronger and better equipped than it was before the war last summer.
Mr. Ban told reporters yesterday that during his half-day stay in Damascus next week, he plans to focus on Lebanon-related issues, but several diplomats who spoke to the Sun in recent days said they were concerned that the trip would just serve to elevate President Al-Assad's prestige in the region.
Israel launched a military incursion into Lebanon last summer after Hezbollah kidnapped two of its soldiers. The Israeli army managed to degrade Hezbollah's military capabilities significantly, but after 34 days of fighting Jerusalem agreed to end the war and significantly strengthen the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
Nevertheless, the rearming of Hezbollah has intensified, in violation of council resolution 1701, which calls for its disarmament, and without much interference from the enlarged and redesignated Unifil.
Separately, the council could attempt to pass a new resolution soon to mandate an international tribunal for trials of suspects in political assassinations in Lebanon, including the February 2005 killing of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The British ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry, told reporters that a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter could become the ultimate fallback plan.
A U.N. legal envoy, Nicolas Michel, left earlier this week on a trip to Lebanon, where he has met with several politicians, including the Shiite speaker of parliament, Nabih Berry, in an attempt to break a political impasse created by pro-Syrian legislators who oppose creating the tribunal.
The tribunal is also expected to be high on Mr. Ban's agenda in Damascus.