Israel agreed to lift its air and sea blockade on Lebanon on Thursday at 6 pm local time (1500 GMT) Thursday, a government statement announced. The decision came after guarantees from the United Nations and the United States that international troops would take up positions at the sea and air port in Beirut.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received the assurances from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the statement said. According to the statement, German experts are due to arrive with special equipment at the Beirut International Airport later Wednesday, while German naval forces are to patrol the Lebanese shores starting within an estimated two weeks. Until their arrival, the sea patrols will be carried out by Italian, French, British and Greek naval forces, the statement said.
The decision was the result of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Lebanese government under mediation by the US and UN, Israeli media reported. Earlier Wednesday, Israeli military sources admitted that Israel had not choice but to lift the sea and air blockade, because it had no means to enforce it. ‘We regret the fact, but we have no choice. We do not want to hit civilian planes,’ a military official told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa, when asked what Israel would do if civilian aircraft broke the air blockade.
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.
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) 
