Irish Aide Protests Lebanon Killing of U.N. Peacekeeper

Irish Defense Minister Patrick O’Toole protested to Israel on Friday over the death of an Irish U.N. peacekeeping soldier killed in Lebanon last week by militiamen of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressed sorrow at the incident but said Israel had no plan to dismantle its self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon, nor to allow U.N. peacekeeping forces to deploy down to the international border, Israeli officials said.

William O’Brien, serving with the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), was shot dead last Saturday by gunfire from a position of the South Lebanon Army, which polices the “security zone” north of Israel’s border with Lebanon.

After an hourlong meeting with Rabin on Friday, O’Toole said: “I told Mr. Rabin that we protested strongly at this incident. He accepted my feeling on the matter without admitting responsibility by the SLA for the incident.”