Overflights by Israel said to violate truce

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora warned on Oct. 6 that Israeli military flights over his country's territory were endangering a nearly two-month-old truce that ended this summer's war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement. Siniora, speaking in an interview, said the overflights were occurring daily. The United Nations, which considers them a violation of the Aug. 14 truce, said it recorded 10 overflights of warplanes and surveillance drones from Oct. 3 to Oct. 9. "I am willing to accept whatever any other sovereign country would accept for itself. Would they allow it?" Siniora asked at his office in the Serail, the government headquarters. "I mean, would the United States allow flyovers of Russian planes? If they would allow it, I accept it. Why do you expect me to do something more than what 195 countries would accept for themselves?" Israel has said it will continue overflights of Lebanese territory until UN Resolution 1701 is, in its view, implemented fully. It says that would require the return of the two soldiers that Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite group, captured in a cross-border raid on July 12 and an inspection mechanism to ensure that no weapons cross the Syrian border into Lebanon to resupply Hezbollah guerrillas. The overflights pose a delicate issue for Siniora, whose government has come under pressure from Hezbollah and followers of a powerful Christian politician, Michel Aoun, to resign in favor of a government they deem more representative.