02 February 2011

BEIRUT: Lebanon filed a complaint against Israel before the Security Council Tuesday through its permanent mission at the U.N. after an Israeli patrol entered Lebanese territories last month.

On Jan. 24 an Israeli patrol in the occupied Shebaa Farms went beyond the technical fence and entered Lebanese territories near the town of Kfarshouba before retreating back to the occupied land.

In its complaint, Lebanon considered the Jan. 24 incident as a “clear violation” of Lebanese sovereignty, Security Council Resolution 1701, international law and the U.N. Charter along with threatening international peace and security.

The country has been in a state of “cessation of hostilities” with Israel after United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 ended Israel’s summer 2006 war against the country

Also Tuesday, caretaker Foreign Minister Ali Shami telephoned Lebanon’s permanent representative at the U.N. in New York, Nawwaf Salam, asking him to arrange for an urgent meeting with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to ask him to work on preserving Lebanon’s land and maritime sovereignty along with maritime and natural resources in south Lebanon in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions 1701, 425 and 426.

Salam was tasked with stressing to Ban that UNIFIL’s maritime taskforce should demarcate the borders of its field of operations in cooperation with the Lebanese Army and Beirut based on the maps of Lebanon’s offshore economic zones, which were handed to Ban in 2010.

Lebanon fears that Israel could extract gas and oil reserves that fall in its territorial waters.

Shami had sent earlier a letter to New York in which he called for the U.N. to “exert every possible effort” to deter Israeli designs on oil and gas resources in the region.

The request was referred to the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs.

Salam told The Daily Star that he telephoned the office of Ban, who is not currently in New York, and called for following up on the matter at the OLA.

“We are following up on this matter every day,” Salam added.

Lebanon’s permanent representative at the U.N. said the country was calling on the UNIFIL maritime task force to deploy in its offshore economic zone as a step to safeguard it.

“We know our maritime borders, they are clear in maps,” he said. “The Foreign Ministry had sent to the U.N. General Secretariat demanding that the area of operations of the UNIFIL maritime force overlap with our offshore economic zone,” Salam explained.

The Noble Energy Company announced in late 2010 that the Leviathan gas field, which is located offshore near the city of Haifa in north Israel, holds an estimated 450 billion cubic meters of natural gas, positioning the country as a natural gas exporter.

Several energy experts believe the Leviathan gas field might be straddling Lebanon’s maritime borders with Israel.

Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri voiced hopes that the U.N. would help Lebanon in delineating its maritime borders while holding talks with Michael Williams, the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon who visited him at his residence in Ain al-Tineh.

“Speaker Nabih also raised with me again the question of Lebanon’s maritime borders and expressed the hope that the U.N. would react positively to requests for assistance in that regard. Personally, I expressed my wish to see the U.N. playing as positive a role as possible,” Michael Williams told reporters after the meeting.

He also discussed with Berri the implementation of Resolution 1701.

Meanwhile, mechanized Israeli units patrolled Tuesday the occupied border village of Ghajar, the occupied village of Abbassieh and reached the Israeli settlement of Metula that overlooks Lebanese territories. UNIFIL troops patrolled the Lebanese side of the Israeli borders as well and observed Israeli movements.

 

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.