Israeli PM announces Lebanon war probe

HAIFA: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday ordered a government inquiry into the conduct of Lebanon war, for the first time admitting failures during the month-long offensive on Hezbollah.        

 

But the embattled premier refused to back calls for the most sweeping type of public inquiry -- a state commission -- which he said would paralyse the leadership at a time when Israel needed to be prepare for a threat from Iran.   

 

"My government will name a commission... that will be charged with examining the conduct of the government," Olmert declared in the northern city of Haifa, which endured multiple deadly Hezbollah rocket attacks.    

 

He announced that the government commission -- over which the increasingly unpopular Olmert would have far more control than a state inquiry -- will be headed by Nahum Admoni, a former chief of Israel's notorious Mossad spy agency.            

 

Olmert, whose fledgling three-month government has faced massive criticism for perceived mismanagement, military inefficiency and lack of war-time readiness, confessed to "problems and failures".             

 

"We did not always achieve the aims we hoped for. Not everything worked properly. There were problems and failures," he told what was a conference of Israeli mayors.      

The offensive left 160 Israelis dead, but failed in its aims of recovering soldiers captured by Hezbollah and stopping the Shiite militia from firing rockets into Israel.        

 

"We have suffered severe losses.... We have not succeeded in stopping the Katyushas (Hezbollah rocket attacks)... and moreover we have not returned the captured soldiers," said Olmert.         

 

The prime minister nonetheless vowed no effort would be spared to return Eldad Regev anbd Ehud Goldwasser, whose capture in a deadly cross-border raid by Shiite militia Hezbollah on July 12, sparked the massive assault in Lebanon. The raid and a subsequent botched Israeli rescue mission left eight Israeli soldiers dead.          

 

"There is real, honest criticism from the heart of reserve soldiers, of citizens... I hear them and I respect them and what they have to say. There are some things that they are right in and some things that I disagree with."       

 

Yet he said a state commission, which would be chaired by a judge and would have the authority to subpoena witnesses, was not what the country needed as it would "totally paralyse" the political and military leadership.            

 

Reports in the Israeli media citing unnamed senior Olmert aides, had widely predicted that the premier would back a governmental inquiry rather than a state commission because it would reach conclusions more quickly.      

 

State commissions were established in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and after the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon after Israel's major invasion in 1982.    

 

But Olmert warned that Israel needed to be ready to face the threat from Tehran, following warnings from another minister earlier this month that the Jewish state needed to prepare for a ballistic missile threat from Iran.     

 

"We have to be prepared for the threat of Iran and its president who hates Israel," he said in Haifa, which came under heavy rocket attack from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah during Israel's war in Lebanon.             

 

"We don't have the luxury to spend years of investigations that has nothing to do with learning lessons and preparing for the future," the premier added. Three months after taking office, the ratings of Olmert and his government have tumbled in the aftermath of the Lebanon offensive.         

 

A massive 63 per cent of Israelis want Olmert to resign with 74 per cent dissatisfied with his leadership, according to one recent opinion poll.         

 

Two other investigations of the Lebanon war are already underway in Israel -- one by the state comptroller and an internal investigation by the defence ministry.