Israel Won’t Withdraw From Southern Lebanon

Israel vowed Friday to stay on in southern Lebanon to keep guerrillas away from northern Israel despite a bloody August capped by a “friendly fire” incident in which four Israeli soldiers burned to death.

“The basic problem in Lebanon hasn’t changed,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli army radio on his way back from a trip to Asia.

If “we depart from Lebanon, Lebanon will enter us--it will reach the Galilee fence,” he said.

Asked if he will raise the Lebanon issue with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she visits Israel in September, he said: “We’ve tried for some time with the Americans to renew the political process between us and Syria, which would certainly influence the situation in Lebanon, but I think it is preferable to wait until her arrival.”

Israel has long appealed to Syria to use its influence to ensure calm in southern Lebanon. Syria has about 35,000 troops in Lebanon.

Syria and Lebanon have in the past rejected calls from Israel to clamp down on the guerrillas, saying their campaign against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon was a legitimate act of resistance.

On Thursday, artillery shells fired in support of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon ignited a brush fire that killed four Israelis and wounded six others, the army said.

The army complained that United Nations peacekeepers delayed efforts to rescue the soldiers.

But a spokesman for the United Nations’ interim force in Lebanon said Israeli troops “cocked their weapons” and forced their way through a roadblock manned by Finnish soldiers without explaining that a rescue effort was underway.