Tapes May Shed Light on Soldiers’ Fate

Israeli officials said edited videotapes and bloodstained items they viewed for the first time Wednesday could shed light on the condition of three Israeli soldiers abducted by guerrillas on the Lebanon border last year.

But Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Yehuda Lancry, said many questions remain unanswered, including whether any of the articles--among them a bloodied water pouch--belonged to the Israeli soldiers and how badly they may have been wounded.

“The role of our next delegation of experts will be to scrutinize the videotapes and the items in order to assess the contents and their significance,” Lancry said.

The United Nations agreed Tuesday to allow Israel two viewings of the videos--one taped by a U.N. peacekeeper the day after the abductions--and of seven of the 53 items found in vehicles believed to have been used by Hezbollah guerrillas in the kidnappings.

For months, the United Nations misled Israel about the tapes, and only Friday, after an internal review, did the world organization acknowledge the existence of additional tapes and articles found in the two vehicles.

A date is to be set within the next 10 days for an additional screening, probably in Geneva, for a team of Israeli forensic and military experts and relatives of the kidnapped soldiers, Lancry said.

The United Nations admitted last month that it misled Israel about the existence of a videotape filmed 18 hours after the Oct. 7 abduction. It showed U.N. peacekeepers handing over, at gunpoint, two vehicles probably used in the abduction.