The Syrian Lebanon boarder is not secure and arms have been flowing into Lebanon From Syria...Shocked Right? But as Al Jolsen used say, "folks you ain't heard nothing yet!" Israel has been saying that ever since the end of the second Lebanese War. Here is the shocking part. The report I am taking about came from the UN.....yeah that UN! And the article covering it was from the New York Times. The New York Freeking I hate Israel Times. See I told you it was shocking. I called the times and asked what happened, they said that their normal mid east guy was on vacation and their International Editors were having their weekly poker game with the "observers" in the Palestinian Mission to the UN. So it slipped through.
They guy at the times was VERY nice. He apologized and promised that the paper would redouble its efforts to prevent any truth from the middle east from slipping through again. Below is the mistakenly truthful article about the weapons going into Lebanon.
UNITED NATIONS, June 26 — The present state of border control is inadequate for preventing the smuggling of arms from Syria into Lebanon, according to a report that a United Nations assessment team submitted to the Security Council on Tuesday.
The team said it was unable to document a single instance of a seizure of arms at or near the border during a three-week visit to a 200-mile stretch of territory that concluded June 15.
The Security Council resolution that ended the war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia last August called on Lebanon to secure its borders and prevent the entry of unauthorized arms, with assistance from the enlarged United Nations force that was sent to south Lebanon to keep the peace.
The report said the task was one that the Lebanese Army was ill prepared to fulfill, because of lack of experience and equipment. Adding to the confusion, it said, is a division of labor among four Lebanese agencies with overlapping responsibilities.
Syria is a backer of Hezbollah and is widely suspected of helping it to rearm with smuggled weapons.
“There is no cooperation between the Lebanese agencies on the operational level and their Syrian counterparts,” the report said.
The team’s findings bolster a warning to the Security Council on June 11 by Terje Roed-Larsen, a special United Nations envoy, who drew an “alarming and deeply disturbing picture” of “a steady flow of weapons and armed elements across the border from Syria.”
After his briefing, the Council endorsed a policy statement that expressed its “deep concern at mounting information by Israel and other states of illegal movements of arms in Lebanon, and in particular across the Lebanese-Syrian border.”
The next day, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency, a Syrian Foreign Ministry official dismissed Mr. Roed-Larsen’s comments as false and said the charges circulated to the Council had originated with Israel and were aimed at damaging Syrian-Lebanese relations. It did not identify the official.
The United Nations team recommended equipping the Lebanese with intelligence and rapid interception capacity.
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