Mubarak sees “no light at end of Mideast tunnel
BEIRUT: Israeli planes blasted south Lebanon for a 17th day on Friday while the military mobilized thousands more reservists for the battle that the Jewish state s main backers, the United States and Britain, are to discuss at the White House. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, under pressure over his support for Washington s apparently unequivocal backing for Israel, is to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution as early as possibly next week to defuse the Middle East conflict, his spokesman said. The use of a Scottish airport as a staging post for U.S. planes to carry bunker-busting bombs for Israel brought renewed pressure on Blair, with his Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett saying she was not happy about it. British officials told London newspapers that more stopovers at Prestwick airport for arms deliveries were in the pipeline with government blessing. It is a right we have always granted, an official in Blair s office was quoted as saying.
President Hosni Mubarak sees no light at the end of Israel s reprisals against Hezbollah, for lack of a Middle East peace process, a U.S. magazine reported Thursday. U.S. and international responses to the clash were a bit too little, too late. The situation could have been contained at its early stage, he said in written responses to Time magazine. Mubarak told the newsweekly that he had asked Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad try to win the release of Israeli soldiers Hezbollah had captured, setting off the crisis. However, Israel s military campaign in Lebanon, went way too far, he said, and has triggered an increasing rage within the Arabs, Muslims and worldwide. Lebanon is heading to a humanitarian crisis. Military operations will not solve Israel s problems with Hezbollah. An immediate ceasefire is the utmost priority. Cessation of hostilities would create the environment conducive to addressing such problems in a candid manner. The bloodshed and the heavy toll of Israel s operations must be brought to an end, Mubarak told the New York-based weekly. The core issue is the stagnation of the peace process, he said. No progress was achieved with regard to the roadmap. The two-state vision declared by President Bush did not move an inch. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, he said. This triggers a great deal of frustration in the whole region and leads to such escalations as witnessed nowadays.
With international pressure mounting for a halt to the fighting, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Malaysia for an Asian foreign ministers meeting, was mulling plans to return to the Middle East. But despite Asian and European Union calls for an immediate ceasefire, U.S. President George W. Bush again warned against what he called a fake peace, maintaining the stalling position adopted, against Arab protests, at an international conference in Rome on Wednesday. Israel seized on the conference s failure to demand a ceasefire as a green light to press its offensive. But on Friday that claim, already rejected by other delegates, was dismissed as outrageous by the United States. Any such statement is outrageous said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli when asked about Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon s assertion that the Rome meeting earlier this week gave Israel authorization. In the face of Hezbollah s fierce resistance and continued firing of missiles on northern Israel, the army said it would deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries near Israel s biggest city, Tel Aviv. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said earlier this week that the stage of firing rockets only into northern Israel was over and there would be attacks deeper into Israel. Israeli aircraft and artillery pounded south Lebanon early Friday killing six more civilians after sporadic clashes between Israeli troops and Shiite militants of Hezbollah through the night. A Jordanian was killed and three members of his family wounded when a missile slammed into a house in the village of Kfar Joz, on a hilltop overlooking the town of Nabatiyeh, police said. The bodies of another Lebanese couple were retrieved from under the rubble of a house in Kfar Joz, where four civilians, including three children, were also wounded in Israeli strikes. A woman was also killed in the village of Bazurieh, south of Tyre. The Israeli justice minister said Thursday that anyone left in the region would be treated as an enemy combatant. Everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah, we have called on all who are there to leave, Ramon maintained. Although thousands of people have fled the region, many others, including children and the elderly, are reported still to be there. And Lebanese rescue workers say scores of others remain beneath rubble.
