Lebanon says issues still pending over sea border talks with Israel
Lebanon insists any demarcation of its sea boundary with
Israel be implemented only as part of a wider package including the land
border, and wants this in writing, the parliament speaker said on Wednesday.
Senior US official David Satterfield has been shuttling
between Lebanon and Israel in an effort to launch the talks between the countries,
which have remained formally in a state of war since Israel was founded in
1948.
Settling the maritime dispute could help both countries
exploit offshore energy reserves. Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steintiz said
on June 19 he expected US-mediated talks to start within a month.
But Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, speaking to MPs
in his parliamentary bloc on Wednesday, said two issues were still pending and
hoped that “work will be done toward solving them”, one of the MPs, Ali Bazzi,
said in televised comments.
“The first matter is related to the linking of the land and
sea (borders),” Bazzi said. “The American position was talking about a verbal
agreement, but everyone knows the stance of Speaker Berri on this issue – we
don’t even trust Israel in a written agreement, let alone an oral one,” he
said.
Lebanon also wants the United Nations to sponsor the talks
rather than simply host them, Bazzi cited Berri as saying.
A statement from Berri’s office on Tuesday said Lebanon
wants the UN representative in Lebanon to sponsor the meetings “to deny the
Israeli enemy the opportunity of snatching Lebanese rights.”
A senior Israeli official has said that a UN peacekeeper
position at Naqoura in southern Lebanon would be a possible venue for the US-mediated
talks.
Berri, Lebanon’s point person with Satterfield, is a close
ally of the powerful Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, a political and military
organization backed by Iran that has fought numerous conflicts with Israeli.
Steinitz said it was likely that as soon as the talks begin,
energy groups operating in both Israeli and Lebanese waters would be able to
carry out the first seismological survey of the disputed area.