UNITED NATIONS (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Israel reached agreement with the United Nations Tuesday on arrangements for viewing videotapes items that could shed light on the condition of three Israeli occupation soldiers abducted by a Lebanese Resistance group on the Lebanon 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 on Wednesday. A date will be set for at least one additional viewing in Vienna for Israeli experts and relatives of the kidnapped soldiers. (Read photo caption below).
The agreement was the latest development in a dispute that erupted when 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 two vehicles likely used in the kidnapping to Hezbollah Resistance men at gunpoint.
Israel at first refused to view an edited version of the tape because the United Nations said it would obscure the faces of the Resistance men.
Israel changed its mind following 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 tapes 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 United Nations came after Annan ordered an investigation into the mishandling of the tape. The probe also found that a report from the deputy commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force said the quantity of blood in the vehicles indicated the soldiers may 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 following Israel's troop withdrawal in May 2000.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Yehuda Lancry, left, addresses the media Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2001, at the U.N. as Deputy Israeli Ambassador Aaron Jacob listens. An Israeli team left the U.N. without viewing videotapes or blood-stained items that could shed light on the condition of three Israeli soldiers abducted by guerrillas on the Lebanon border last year. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)