CAIRO, 5 September 2003 — The Arab League is acting as mediator to end the crisis between Lebanon and Libya over the disappearance of a prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric 25 years ago, Arab League chief Amr Mussa said yesterday. Mussa told journalists he had made telephone calls to the respective Lebanese and Libyan foreign ministers, Jean Obeid and Abdel Rahman Shalgham. He said was trying to arrange a meeting with the two together on the sidelines of the Sept. 9-10 conference of Arab foreign ministers here “in the hope of overcoming the current problem between the two countries.” Libya closed down its embassy in Beirut on Wednesday, in response to accusations by Lebanese Shiite religious and political officials that Libyan leader Moamer QadDafi helped cover up the disappearance of Imam Mussa Sadr, who went missing on a trip to Libya in 1978.
Back Home: About 50 Lebanese, who had fled to Israel at the end of its 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon, returned home yesterday, Lebanese police sources said. They crossed the border at Naqura in UN peacekeeping force vehicles and were driven up to the first Lebanese army post.
Following a brief interrogation, most members of the group, which included Christians, Shiite Muslims and Druze, were allowed to return to their villages in the southern strip of Lebanon occupied by Israel until May 2000. Only eight people in the group were held for further questioning, according to police sources. Following Israel’s pullout from Lebanon, some 6,500 people, mostly members of its proxy South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia and their families, fled to Israel for fear of reprisals by the Shiite radical group Hezbollah or of facing criminal charges.
