U.N. envoy to Lebanon tries to ease war jitters

The United Nations’ top envoy to Lebanon sought to ease Middle East war jitters Wednesday, insisting that the region was not headed toward a fresh conflict pitting Israel against Arabs despite potentially explosive reports of Scud missile transfers and ongoing fighter aircraft maneuvers.

Michael Williams, the U.N.’s special coordinator for Lebanon, told reporters here that his agency had been in touch with both Lebanese and Israeli government officials as well as the Shiite Muslim military and political organization Hezbollah and was convinced that a sharp spike in regional tensions was receding.

“I think there is too much at stake to lose for all the parties,” he told reporters after a meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, according to an official transcript. “I think tensions have been high the last few days. But I hope that those will lower now.”

U.S. officials have voiced concern about the allegation that Hezbollah has Scuds that could hit Israel’s major population centers, but they have not publicly verified or rejected it.

“We are at a point now … where Hezbollah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world,” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters Tuesday at an appearance at the Pentagon with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak. “And this is obviously destabilizing for the whole region.”

Tensions between Israel and its neighbors rose this month after reports cited anonymous Israeli officials alleging that Syria had transferred medium-range Scud ballistic missiles to Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a bloody standstill in a 2006 war that still haunts the region.

Hezbollah, a strategic ally of Iran and Syria, controls much of southern Lebanon, which abuts Israel’s northern border. Israel has invaded Lebanon over the decades to halt guerrilla attacks, occupying the country’s south for nearly two decades from 1982, before withdrawing amid mounting casualties.

Lebanese and Syrian government officials have vehemently denied transferring Scuds to Hezbollah. Hariri has likened the accusation to false allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

“We talk about peace while the Israelis talk about war,” Hariri said Tuesday after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik.

But Hezbollah itself has kept mum about whether it has Scuds. It was obliged to disarm under the terms of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701, which halted hostilities in the 2006 war, but now publicly boasts that it is armed with more and longer-range missiles than before the conflict, during which it showered northern Israel with rockets.

Scuds, which are at least 30 feet long, have a minimum range of 110 miles. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned in February that his organization could strike Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport, about 80 miles from the Lebanese frontier, if Israelis target Beirut’s airport.

Meanwhile, Israeli fighter jets cross into Lebanese airspace almost daily, also violating the terms of the 2006 truce and raising fears of an impending conflict involving Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, a strategic ally of Damascus as well as of Hezbollah. Lebanese army officers describe the overflights as provocations and on at least one occasion in February troops opened fire with antiaircraft missiles. No planes were reported struck.

Israel has described Iran’s nuclear development program as an existential threat and has warned of military action to destroy its facilities if Tehran appears close to achieving weapons capability. At the same time, it fears that Hezbollah might retaliate on Iran’s behalf.

Williams, a silver-haired former British diplomat, said officials in Israel he met with this week “expressed to me their continued commitment to the implementation” of the truce, which established a fortified U.N. force of nearly 14,000 international troops, including soldiers from North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries close to Israel, as a buffer in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, at a meeting of his political party Monday, denied that Israel was planning military action against Syria, according to an account by the news website Ynet.

“I am convinced that it remains in the interest of all parties to abide by Resolution 1701 and to preserve the cessation of hostilities,” Williams told reporters. “The last thing that this region wants and needs is further conflict. It has had enough of that over the years.”

daragahi@latimes.com