Yussef SADAKA: Lebanon has always paid because of controversies inside Israel

The week before the European Union decided to send peacemakers to Southern Lebanon. The most numerous troops of three thousand is going to be sent to Lebanon by Italy who also expressed readiness to command the UN force there. France agreed to send two thousand peacemakers to Lebanon after the UN confirmation of soldiers’ right to use force both for self-defense and protection of civilians. The total number of peacemakers is expected to reach only 7 — 8 thousand troops, not 15 thousand as it was supposed earlier.

On August 28 Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, went to the region to strengthen the armistice between Israel and Hesbollah, a radical Lebanese group, which was reached with the UN help. After Lebanon Kofi Annan is expected to pay visits to Israel, Palestinian territories, Syria, and also Iran, which he had not visited since Makhmud Ahmadinejad had been elected its president. The main topics of Annan’s negotiations with the Lebanese authorities are likely to be the peacemakers’ mission in the South and abolition of Israel’s blockade of Lebanon.

What is the Lebanese view on the cause of the current conflict? Did Lebanon have enough sovereignty to control the southern part of the country to prevent Hesbollah combatants from their onslaughts, which has drawn the whole country to such consequences? What can be possible Ukraine’s role in setting the Middle East conflict as a whole and the Lebanese one in particular? Are the Ukrainian peacekeepers expected in Lebanon? Yussef Sadaka, the Lebanese Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, answers these questions in the interview given to The Day .

Don’t you think that the recent conflict between Israel and Hesbollah is stipulated by the lack of Lebanese sovereignty over the southern part of the country? You see, after the withdrawal of Israeli troops in 2000 from the Lebanese territory and the Syrian troops in 2005 the government failed to prevent Hesbollah combatants from onslaughts to the Israeli territory, which provoked Jerusalem to draw Israeli troops to Southern Lebanon.