Four Mothers: Weizman sympathetic
Jerusalem post
By DAVID RUDGE
JERUSALEM (August 25) - President Ezer Weizman met
yesterday at Beit Hanassi with representatives of the
Four
Mothers movement, which is pressing for the withdrawal
of the
IDF from south Lebanon.
They declined to relays details of the conversation with
Weizman but expressed satisfaction that the president
had
agreed to meet them so quickly after they had submitted
their
request - immediately after the deaths of an IDF soldier
and a
civilian in a bomb blast near the Beaufort Castle
outpost late
last Thursday.
"We submitted our request on Friday and he has already
seen
us. I think this signifies his attitude towards the Four
Mothers
and our aim," said Zahara Anteby, who was among the
three
women and two men who met the president.
"From what we understood, the president intends to meet
with
the Defense Minister and other ministers because he has
his
own ideas and suggestions for dealing with the Lebanon
problem," said Anteby.
Weizman himself told reporters that the need to pull the
army
out of Lebanon was well known, but he ruled out the
possibility
of unilateral withdrawal.
"We can't just pick-up the kit-bags and go home," he
said.
"There is Syria, and Syria and Lebanon are virtually one
and
the same, and therefore [any withdrawal] has to be done
wisely
and very carefully.
"In the meantime, from the military aspect, the best way
has to
be found to be able to live there, or more correctly,
not die there.
It is an issue that the defense minister and the chief
of staff are
dealing with and, from time to time, I ask them about
it," said
Weizman.
Members of the Four Mothers movement, meanwhile, are
continuing to stage a sit-in protest in a tent pitched
opposite the
Jerusalem home of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Email: yona@netvision.net.il