Qatar Airways resumed its direct service to Beirut on Monday, despite Israel's air and sea blockade of Lebanon. Though company officials said the plane flew without Israeli permission, Israel said it had agreed to the flight and that more were expected.

"We operated this flight as a result of contacts with the Lebanese government. We don't care about any other permission," Qatar Airways regional director Marwan al-Habr told reporters at Beirut airport.

Israel has demanded that all such flights pass through Amman, Jordan for security reasons. The first Qatar Airways plane landed in Beirut on Monday with 142 passengers on board.

	Advertisement

Qatar, a political maverick in the conservative Gulf Arab region, maintains low-level ties with Israel. It is also a key U.S. ally and hosts a major U.S. military base.

Israel is allowing certain ships to enter Lebanese ports, despite the formal continuation of the blockade, British shipping industry newspaper Lloyd's List will report on Tuesday.

According to a shipping agent contacted by the paper, a number of oil tankers carrying petroleum product and ships ferrying aid have been able to unload at Lebanese ports in the last week.

A spokesman for an agent affiliated to the Lloyd's of London insurance market in Beirut, G Sahyouni i Co, told Lloyd's List: "Ships come to 65 miles off Beirut and get permission from the Israeli navy. After that they can come in."

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday urged Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon to give the country a chance to rebuild itself. Annan urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to lift the blockade.

"We are using the UN influence to lift the embargo especially as Lebanon is trying to rebuild ... It has to be allowed to rebuild. I urge Israel to cooperate," he said.

Israel has kept a blockade on Lebanon since July 13, saying it was aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rearming.

He also said he hopes the expanded peacekeeping force in Lebanon would serve as a "manifestation of international solidarity" with the country.

Qatar announced on Monday that it would contribute 200 to 300 troops to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, making the tiny Persian Gulf state the first Arab country to commit soldiers to the peace effort in Lebanon.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani said Qatar's contribution to UNIFIL was an attempt "to tell the world of the Arab presence, even modestly, in this force and to tell Israel that we believe in this decision and so we want to contribute in implementing it."

The announcement came after Sheik Hamad held talks with Annan in Doha.

"We have decided that Qatar will participate in UNIFIL [the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon] by sending 200-300 military personnel and we believe UNIFIL must have specific duties on the ground," Sheikh Hamad said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said in response, "Qatar has relations with Israel and as a result Israel has no objection to its participation in the force."

UNIFIL Chief Major-General Alain Pelligrini, said Monday that a joint meeting with Lebanese and Israeli officers had brought closer a full Israeli troop withdrawal from south Lebanon in line with a UN resolution.

Pelligrini met representatives of the Lebanese and Israeli armies on Monday at his UNIFIL headquarters in the southern Lebanese port of Naquora to coordinate the process of the Israeli pullout and Lebanese deployment, in conjunction with the peacekeepers, a UN statement said.

"The meeting was productive and I think we are on the right track in security the full withdrawal of [the] IDF from Lebanon and finally ensuring that the Lebanese army will take control of the whole border area in the south," he said.

Lebanon had become increasingly agitated by what it sees as a delay in the Israeli withdrawal and the lifting of an eight-week-old Israeli sea and air blockade. The UN has said the Israeli pullout would be completed once the number of peacekeepers reach 5,000.

Finland to contribute troops
The Finnish government has approved a plan to send up to 250 soldiers as the contribution to the UN operation in Lebanon, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen told a news conference on Monday.

The main body of troops would arrive by the start of November and are expected to remain until the end of 2007. Finland's troops will mainly be engineers, according to the plan.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier reiterated his commitment to sending a naval force to patrol Lebanon's coast and prevent the smuggling of weapons. However, he said he was still waiting for an official request from Beirut.

Security Council Resolution 1701, which halted a war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah last month, stipulates the deployment of a bolstered up UNIFIL and Lebanese troops in the south and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.