ITALY: Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres confirms withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon when peacekeepers arrive

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Italy that Israel will begin to pull out troops from southern Lebanon once 5,000 U.N. peacekeepers arrive, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said at a news conference on Thursday (August 31). "Shimon Peres confirmed to me that with the arrival of 5,000 members of the U.N. force in southern Lebanon, Israeli forces will start to withdraw," Prodi told reporters after meeting with Peres in Rome. It was not clear what Peres meant by "start to withdraw". Israel's army says it has already handed over more than two thirds of the territory it captured in southern Lebanon to the United Nations. Israel began to pull out its troops soon after a truce came into effect. Peres said that the Italian initiative to send a large contingent of peacekeepers into Lebanon had given weight to the United Nations resolution which would have remained only a piece of paper without their intervention. "Italy is known all over the world as the greatest bridge builders, their architecture of building bridges and having architects of bridges. I think what Italy did right now under President Prodi was to build a new bridge in the Middle East" said Peres at the conference. Italy will lead the U.N. force in Lebanon starting next year and has committed up to 3,000 soldiers to help secure the truce. Asked what they would do if Italian peacekeepers saw weapons passing from Syria to Hizbollah guerillas in Lebanon, Prodi replied that Bachar Asad was committed to UN Resolution 1701. "I had a long conversation yesterday with Bashar Assad and I pressed him to follow the 1701 decision and he really answered that he was committed to this decision and he was in favour of a United Nations intervention in Lebanon. So I shall certainly repeat to him and others, step by step, the necessity of implementation of all the details of this resolution. This is what I am doing and what I shall do in the future," Prodi told reporters. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday (August 31) renewed his call on Israel to fully withdraw as soon as 5,000 peacekeepers were in southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had rebuffed the demand when Annan was in Jerusalem on Wednesday (August 30), saying troops would stay until all parts of the U.N. resolution that halted hostilities with the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla group on Aug. 14 were met.

ITN Source | September 1, 2006

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