UN deliberately targeted by Israeli precision guided missiles

Wife of missing UN observer believes he is alive in rubble

By Mike Blanchfield

CanWest News Service

And Frank Armstrong

Kinston Whig-Standard

Kingston, Ont. – The wife of Maj.Paeta Hess-von Kruedener says she has not given up hope her husband is alive somewhere in the rubble of his bombed-out south Lebanon UN observation post, as she blamed Israel for deliberately targeting her husband’s neutral position.

.Í believe in miracles,” Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener said Thursday.

“Why did they bomb the UN site? In my opinion, those are precision-guided missiles, then that is intentional – with 3 bombs.”

Whether the attack was deliberate and whether the UN observers should have been withdrawn – as Prime Minister Stephan Harper suggested earlier this week – remains a hotly debated question.

One of the Defence Department’s leading experts on peacekeeping suggested Harper demonstrated a lack of understanding when he questioned why four unarmed UN monitors, including Hess-von Kruedener, remained at their southern Lebanon post only to be killed.

“I think it shows the Prime Minister was not adequately briefed. He needs to know what the function of military observers are,” said Walter Dorn, a professor specializing in UN peacekeeping and monitoring missions at the Royal Military College in Kinston, Ont.

“It is during times of conflict these observers are most valuable because that’s when they’re the eyes and ears of the international community,” Dorn added in a telephone interview from New York, where he is beginning a six-month term as a visiting expert at the UN.

Dorn said many fellow Canadians at the UN in New York expressed “shock and dismay” at Harper’s remarks following the death of Hess-von Kruedener, who was killed Tuesday along with three colleagues in an Israeli air strike on their observation post in south Lebanon.

Speaking in New Brunswick on Wednesday, Harper said he doubted the bombing was a deliberate attack by Israel, but added: “We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned, during what is, more or less, a war, during obvious danger to these particular individuals.”

Harper called for a full investigation into the circumstances of the bombing.

UN officials reacted coolly to Harper’s suggestion that their observation team should have been pulled out.

“The UN mission in Lebanon is there under a Security Council resolution since 1978. In terms of the specific patrol post that the four UN military observers were based in they were posted in a well marked area and the United Nations had assurances and reassurances that they would not come under attack,” Marie Okabe, spokeswoman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said Thursday when asked about Harper’s comments.

Hess-von Kredener’s wife and Dorn also pointed out the UN observation post was well marked and would have been well known to the Israeli Defence Force.

“It’s a three-story building, ver solid looking, painted white so it would be very clear to see with the large black UN markings on the side. It flies a UN flag very high, it must be up around six stories,” said Dorn.

“If they knew they were being deliberately targeted, an evacuation plan would have been worth it. And should have been carried out. But they got repeated assurances over a period of six hours that they were not being targeted.”