Annan pays visit to war-ravaged south Lebanon

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, visiting devastated south Lebanon today, urged Israel and Hizbullah to move swiftly to settle disputes blocking a permanent ceasefire to be upheld by 15,000 UN peacekeepers.

He listed as "serious irritants" the fate of two Israeli soldiers snatched by Hizbullah and that of Lebanese prisoners held in Israel, as well as an Israeli air and sea blockade of Lebanon imposed at the start of the war nearly seven weeks ago.

Mr Annan, who later flew to Israel by helicopter on the second leg of his Middle East tour, was due to meet Defence Minister Amir Peretz and the families of the soldiers at 4:30pm.

"We need to resolve the issue of the abducted soldiers very quickly. Obviously the issue of the (Lebanese) prisoners ... will also have to be dealt with," he said in Naqoura, main base of the current 2,000-strong UNIFIL force in Lebanon.

Mr Annan again called on Israel to lift its blockade of Lebanon, which he said the Lebanese saw as a "humiliation and infringement of their sovereignty", while stressing the need for the Beirut government to exert control over its borders.

Israel has refused to lift the blockade, citing the need to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah, whose capture of the Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked the war.

Mr Annan is trying to secure full implementation of a Security Council resolution that halted the fighting on August 14 and mandated up to 15,000 UN troops to deploy in the south.

Many thousands of civilians have returned to the south, but are finding a landscape strewn with cluster bombs.

"Unexploded ordnance continues to be a major threat, especially to children," said Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF, in Geneva.

He said 359 Israeli cluster bomb strike locations had been reported in the south, along with more than 60 unexploded bombs ranging from 500 to 2,000 pounds in houses and gardens.

At least 12 people have been killed by cluster bombs since the war, which cost the lives of nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, in Lebanon, as well as 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers.