- BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese
President Emile Lahoud said on Saturday Israeli "threats" would
not persuade Lebanon to back out of plans to tap a stream Israel also needs,
as Israeli sources said Washington might send an envoy to curb the dispute.
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- "Lebanon's decision to use Wazzani spring water
to irrigate its parched southern land is a final one that will not be reversed,"
said a statement from Lahoud's office.
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- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Israel takes
a "grave view" of a Lebanese project to pump more water from
the Hasbani river in southern Lebanon to supply local villages. The Wazzani
is a tributary to the Hasbani.
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- Work on the project is continuing, and Lebanon asked
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to persuade
Israel to stop its "threats" over the Hasbani, which flows from
Lebanon into the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, Israel's largest
freshwater reservoir.
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- "The pressure is on Israel to stop its attempts
to create a new problem with Lebanon," the statement quoted Lahoud
as saying to a visiting delegation of French parliamentarians.
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- Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud said after
a meeting on Saturday of Arab foreign ministers in New York that he had
issued "a memo to the ministers and UN secretary-general, demanding
an end to these threats, on the grounds that Israel is encroaching on Lebanon's
right to its land and its waters."
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- Speaking in Washington, Israeli sources said the United
States had proposed dispatching a mediator to help resolve the tensions
but gave no time frame for a possible visit.
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- Almost all the five Arab-Israeli wars fought since Israel's
founding in 1948 have touched on water-related issues.
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- Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon in May
2000 after a 22-year occupation, but the countries are still in a state
of war and disputes over water often erupt.
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- Lebanon's Energy and Water Minister Mohammad Abdel Hamid
Baydoun told local radio that U.S. mediation was not necessary because
Lebanon would not give up rights to the water. "But if the Americans
want to cool the hotheads of the Israelis and stop their threats, then
that is what is needed," he added.
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- Lebanon says plans to pump about nine million cubic meters
of water a year to five or six villages on the banks of the Hasbani, up
from seven million now, fall within the amount Lebanon is allowed to tap
under international law.
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- "Israel's occupation of the south over the years
-- its tapping of the Wazzani waters and exploiting them to irrigate its
own lands and set up tourist projects and pools -- left southern villages
parched," Lahoud said. "It is not possible to give it the right
to continue with this encroachment that Lebanon considers a violation of
its sovereignty."
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