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NS/mh 43 (Mr. Alarcon de Quesada, Cuba) The territory of Lebanon – or part of it – has been occupied by Israel for 12 years, and on the eve of this deplorable and regrettable conflict between Kuwait and Iraq, as we all know, the Council had to consider once again the situation concerning the United Nations force in southern Lebanon. We had to confine ourselves to renewing that force's mandate and to issuing a terse and carefully worded presidential declaration which made no reference to strong sanctions against Israel, notwithstanding the fact that Israel, as the Secretary-General's own report stated, is not complying with the relevant Security Council resolution, is not co-operating with the United Nations force in the area and, even worse, is attacking it.

Worse still, we had to learn from the report that two Nepalese soldiers had lost their lives in unprovoked incidents. They were the victims of Israeli weapons. Since we did not adopt sanctions, did we at least express the Security Council's condemnation of that situation? Did we even state that we deplored the fact that after 12 years of the occupation of southern Lebanon, Israel still was not expressing any willingness to leave the territory? Did we even express concern? Was there any initiative faxed to our missions for an immediate meeting of the Council to adopt such decisions? Evidently that was not the case.

Seven months ago the territory of another small and weak country was invaded by the military force of a great power and in a matter of hours that power, the United States, took possession of that country. There was one innovation in that case which was perhaps without precedent: it installed a new Government, perhaps the first in the world in which the President, the Head of Government, took the oath of office at a United States military base, naturally in the presence of the commanding general of the occupying forces. That happened seven months ago. There was, of course, no United States draft resolution calling for the imposition of