Israeli raid endangers cease-fire deal

BEIRUT -- Israeli commandos swept into the Bekaa Valley yesterday, staging a raid deep within Lebanese territory that enraged the government and threatened the fragile cease-fire that began on Monday.

Lebanon's prime minister, Fuad Saniora, called the raid a ``flagrant violation" of the UN- brokered truce, and the defense minister said he might halt the deployment of Lebanon's army to the border region -- the linchpin of the accord to remove Hezbollah forces from the area.

``If there are no clear answers forthcoming on this issue, I might be forced to recommend to the Cabinet early next week the halt of the army deployment in the south," Lebanon's defense minister, Elias Murr, said yesterday.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the raid a violation of the truce, his spokesman said yesterday.

Israel said one of its soldiers was killed and two others were wounded in the raid. Hezbollah denied media reports that four of its fighters were also killed.

The raid underscores how delicate the cease-fire remains. After 34 days of fighting, the cease-fire took effect at 8 a.m. Monday . Since then there have been only a handful of cease-fire violations, involving gunfights between Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli military near the border.

Israel said yesterday's raid was launched to prevent Hezbollah from re-arming, adding that it had to right to do so under the terms of the cease-fire agreement.

``The UN Security Council resolution on Lebanon is very explicit: It says that Hezbollah cannot use the cease-fire to rearm, to receive more missiles and more rockets from Syria and Iran," Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said. ``That was happening, and Israel acted to prevent that from happening."

UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told Lebanese television that if the media reports about the raid were correct, ``it is of course a clear violation of the cease-fire."

Lebanon began deploying 15,000 soldiers to the border area on Thursday, and Israel began pulling out its own troops. The United Nations is still scrambling to put together a force of 15,000 international troops to buttress the existing UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which numbers only 2,000 troops.

The first contingent of 49 French troops landed yesterday in Naqoura, southern Lebanon, with another 200 expected this week.

Israel, however, still controls much of Lebanon, for instance deciding which flights to allow into Beirut's airport, and so far maintaining its naval blockade of the country.

It's unclear what Israel was targeting in the raid. Sheik Mohammed Yazbeck, a senior Hezbollah official in the Bekaa Valley and a member of the group's Shura council is from Boudai, near where the Israeli commandos clashed with Hezbollah. Witnesses told Lebanese media that Yazbeck was not in the area at the time of the raid, which began around dawn yesterday.

The raid took place near Baalbek, about 60 miles from the Israeli border. The Lebanese government released little information about the raid, but a military official speaking on condition of anonymity said that Lebanese news accounts were accurate.

According to the media reports, Israeli helicopters dropped two jeeps in a field outside Boudai. Israeli commandos, dressed in Lebanese Army uniforms, then drove through a Hezbollah checkpoint on the road, greeting the fighters in Palestinian-accented Arabic but refusing to stop.

Hezbollah fighters fired on the vehicles, their suspicions raised because there are still no Lebanese soldiers deployed in the area, according to the reports on LBC, the national Lebanese television network. A gunfight ensued.

The raid was only the second time Israeli forces penetrated so far into Lebanese territory. Israel staged its boldest raid of the conflict in Baalbek on Aug. 2, when commandos arrest five suspected Hezbollah fighters and killed more than a dozen.

Israel warned that yesterday's raid may not be its last. With Europe moving slowly to provide troops, the Israeli government said it would act on its own to enforce an arms embargo on the Islamic militant group until the international monitoring force is in place.

The United States declined to criticize the Israeli campaign, noting the arms ban on Hezbollah that is included in the UN resolution. A White House spokeswoman called for quickly deploying the UN monitoring force.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.