Israel and Lebanon both expressed anger over a U.N. Security Council statement Wednesday deploring the recent killings in the region.
Lebanon failed to secure an urgent meeting of the council, to protest Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon, including the assassination Sunday of Shi’ite leader Sheik Abbas Musawi and air strikes against Palestinian refugee camps.
Israel, for its part, wanted the statement issued by the Security Council to reflect more closely a joint U.S.-Russian draft, which omitted the word “deplore.”
The final version said that the Security Council “deplores in particular the recent killings and the continued violence which threatens to claim additional lives and to destabilize the region further,” it said.
The statement referred not only to Lebanon but also made reference to Israeli-Palestinian relations in the West Bank.
Israel’s air strikes at the refugee camps and the killing of the sheik followed upon the brutal slayings of three Israeli army recruits by Arab guerrillas last weekend.
Lebanon called the attacks on its territory “the latest acts of aggression by Israel against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon and its continuous occupation of southern Lebanon” and part of the Bekaa Valley.
However, Nabil Osman, a spokesman for the Egyptian Embassy here, liked the U.N. statement.
He said, “The most important part was not only the call for restraint or the reference to violence,” but that “in the absence of real genuine peace in the area, violence is a product of the status quo.”
Another Arab diplomat said Israel’s assassination of the sheik was “impossible to support.”
“Killings by their nature” are violent acts “which cannot be justified,” said the unidentified diplomat, who called the killing of Musawi an “attack on a civilian motorcade.”
U.S. ISSUES TRAVEL WARNING
Meanwhile, the threat of more violence in the Middle East prompted the State Department to issue a warning to U.S. nationals “traveling or residing in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.”
Last weekend’s violence “has increased the security risk” to U.S. nationals there, said Richard Boucher, a department spokesman.
“Press reports quote Hezbollah officials as calling for ‘vengeance against the U.S,’ ” he said.
Israel’s Tourism Ministry seemed mildly concerned about the warning’s impact on travel to Israel in the coming weeks. By contrast, the ministry has complained about U.S. travel advisories over the past few years, which, unlike warnings, represent a higher level of U.S. concern about possible violence.
“There is a possibility that Americans could be targets of terrorist action, including renewed kidnappings,” Boucher said. “The situation in Lebanon is particularly dangerous for Americans. The department’s latest travel advisory for Lebanon, issued in December, warns that no U.S. citizen can be considered safe from terrorist acts in Lebanon,” he said.
He emphasized that “U.S. passports remain invalid for travel to, through or in Lebanon.”
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