Kofi's Story Unravels

Great piece in the NY Sun about some details that are coming out which dispute Kofi Annan's outrageous and as yet unretracted claim that Israel deliberately targeted a UN outpost in Lebanon, killing four UN peacekeepers.

An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan's initial accusation that Israel "deliberately" targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were "all over" the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel's target, the deceased observer wrote.

A UN spokeswoman is denying the allegation - even though there are e-mails that back up the claim that Hizbollah was using the UN post for cover, and the UN declined to present evidence to back up their denials of the claims. This story was around the blogs a bit yesterday, but it's nice to see the more mainstream media pick it up - even if it is only the Sun so far.

UPDATE: The JPost has a great editorial on the subject:

Israel has already apologized for, and pledged to investigate, the deaths of the UNIFIL soldiers. Where is Kofi Annan's apology for insulting Israel, and his investigation of how UNIFIL came to be so inseparable from Hizbullah that it has been almost impossible to target the later without inadvertently hitting the former?

...The lamentable killing of the four UNIFIL personnel clearly requires investigation, something the IDF carries out in any case of a mistake made in the heat of battle. But an investigation of even greater importance to long-term regional stability would be of UNIFIL's failure to fulfill its mandate of restoring peace and security in southern Lebanon and assisting the Lebanese government in restoring its effective authority in the area.

With diplomacy focused on creating a new multinational force in the aftermath of the fighting in southern Lebanon, it is essential to understand what went wrong with the existing one.

Such an investigation must determine more than just how UNIFIL troops were located in such close proximity to Hizbullah terrorists that they ended up in the line of fire. More fundamentally, it would delve into how, in complete contravention of its objectives, UNIFIL stood by without a murmur as a terrorist organization amassed thousands upon thousands of rockets whose unprovoked use has killed and wounded dozens of Israelis and precipitated the current war.

Read it.

UPDATE II: Received this link via e-mail - it's a good one.