BEIRUT (AFP) – Lebanese MPs have continued for a second day their round-the-clock protest at Israel’s continued blockade, almost three weeks after a UN-brokered ceasefire in its deadly onslaught against Hezbollah. Parliament speaker Nabih Berri took part in the protest along with two ministers and nine deputies, with similar size rotations expected to continue until the blockade is lifted, officials said.
Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh said Lebanon was taking steps to get the blockade lifted."The Israeli blockade is in violation of (UN Security Council) Resolution 1701, and we have taken steps to make sure it is lifted," Sallukh said according to the official ANI news agency."The sit-in is an important step toward helping the executive branch in its efforts to lift the blockade."Israel imposed a blanket air and sea blockade on Lebanon following the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants, a blockade it has maintained despite the halt to hostilities on August 14 following the passage of Resolution 1701.
Source: WFP, Municipal workers have distributed food rations from the WFP to vulnerable families in Beirut
By Patrick Lannin, Reuters | 
By Roula Khalaf in Beirut and Mark Turner at the United Nations, Published: August 27 2006 18:33 | Last updated: August 27 2006 18:33, The Lebanese government will on Monday press Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, for a lifting of the Israeli air and sea blockade and appeal for international help to persuade Israel to withdraw from a disputed border area.Mr Annan arrives in Beirut on the first leg of a high-stakes Middle East tour in which he will face a dizzying array of conflicting agendas and entrenched demands.
BEIRUT, 21 August (IRIN) AP – The international community should show more commitment to calls by the United Nations to strengthen the international peacekeeping force in Lebanon, said experts in Beirut. "For the ceasefire to hold, the international community needs to show more preparedness and commitment to joining the international peacekeeping force as soon as possible," said Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of The Daily Star newspaper, on Monday. There has already been a breach of the 14 August ceasefire as Israel carried out an attack on the eastern Beqaa Valley on 19 August. The UN condemned the action, saying it was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1701, which calls for a cessation of hostilities between Israel and the armed wing of Lebanese political party Hezbollah. "The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities," a UN spokesman said on 19 August. 
The United Nations AP- on Thursday outlined a "robust" mandate for thousands of international peacekeepers to be deployed in Lebanon and urgently called on member states to pledge troops. UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said the force would be "robust" but not offensive and set out draft rules of engagement.
BEIRUT, Lebanon AP
YABOUS BORDER CROSSING, Syria, August 14 (UNHCR) 
