Israel, U.N. Reach Pact on Kidnap-Related Items

Israel reached agreement with the United Nations on Tuesday concerning arrangements for viewing videotapes and items that could shed light on the condition of three Israeli soldiers abducted by guerrillas along the Lebanese border last year.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Yehuda Lancry, said a team of Israelis would look at two videos and seven bloodstained items today.

A date will be set for at least one additional viewing in Vienna for Israeli experts and relatives of the kidnapped soldiers.

The agreement is the latest development in a dispute that erupted when the United Nations admitted last month that it had misled Israel about the existence of a videotape filmed 18 hours after the Oct. 7 abductions.

It showed U.N. peacekeepers handing over to Hezbollah guerrillas two vehicles that were probably used in the kidnappings.

Israel at first refused to view an edited version of the tape because the United Nations had said it would obscure the faces of the guerrillas.

Israel changed its mind after Friday’s release of a U.N. report revealing the existence of not just one but three videotapes, as well as 53 items--seven of them bloodstained--that U.N. peacekeepers took from the vehicles before handing them over.

Lancry accepted Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s offer to view the two videotapes in U.N. possession and the bloodstained items.

Israel had wanted its experts, including doctors and forensic specialists, to have several opportunities to see the material.

Friday’s admission by the U.N. came after Annan ordered an investigation into the mishandling of the information.

The probe also found that a report from the deputy commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force had said the quantity of blood in the vehicles indicated that the soldiers might be dead.

U.N. peacekeepers were stationed in southern Lebanon after Israel’s first military incursion into the area in 1978. The peacekeeping force is now being scaled down after Israel’s troop withdrawal in May 2000.