Lebanon urged the UN Security Council today to quickly impose a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, but Israel said it was trying to free its neighbour from terrorist occupation and insisted the Beirut government secretly backed its actions.
Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud and Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman addressed an emergency session of the 15-nation council as Israel intensified attacks on Hizbollah targets and civilian installations and Hizbollah fighters fired more rockets across the border into Israel.
Council members said they planned no immediate action apart from a statement welcoming UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's decision to send a team to the region to encourage restraint.
The United States yesterday vetoed a resolution drafted by Arab nations calling on Israel to immediately end a separate two-week military incursion in Gaza.
US Ambassador John Bolton called the measure "not only untimely, but already outmoded" and biased against Israel. Mr Mahmoud said Israel's actions were "aimed at bringing Lebanon to its knees and subverting it by any means."
"I do not need to explain to you here who the victim is and who the aggressor is," he said. He asked the council "to take an immediate and clear decision calling for a comprehensive, immediate cease-fire, a lifting of the air and sea blockade imposed upon Lebanon and calling for an end to Israeli aggression."
Mr Gillerman, however, said the Lebanese government had brought the Israeli actions on itself, by allowing Hizbollah to remain armed and keep de facto control over southern Lebanon, enabling it to cross the border to seize two Israeli soldiers.
"Lebanon is today occupied by terror," he said, accusing Hizbollah of comprising "an axis of terror" along with the Palestinian militant group Hamas - the elected Palestinian government - and Syria and Iran, which he said support Hamas and Hizbollah.
He urged Lebanon to free itself from the axis by extending its authority across all its territory "and exercise sovereignty over a free Lebanon.
Many Lebanese shared his view of the crisis, he said.
Earlier senior United Nations officials urged both Israel and Hizbullah must stop attacking civilian targets in their escalating conflict.
While criticising Israel's response as "massive and disproportionate", Mr Egeland said those who had kidnapped Israeli soldiers and fired homemade rockets into Israeli territory from both Gaza and southern Lebanon were also at fault.
"It seems that they want to provoke a response, and they don't seem to care the slightest bit that it is the children and the women and the civilians who bear the brunt of all of this," he told a news conference in Geneva.
Some 63 people, mainly civilians, have died and at least 165 have been wounded since Hizbullah guerrillas seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight, sparking the most intense bombardment Lebanon has seen for a decade.