U.N. Strongly Condemns Killing of Spanish Peacekeeper, Sets up Inquiry

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday condemned "in the strongest terms" last week's killing of a Spanish peacekeeper in southern Lebanon and decided to set up a board of inquiry to investigate his death, a senior U.N. official said.

Wednesday's statement comes a week after Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo was killed during the Israeli military's exchange of fire with Hizbullah in a disputed border area.

Spain's U.N. ambassador Roman Oyarzun quickly blamed Israel, and the U.N. diplomat has said Israel apologized through several sources, including an apology from its ambassador in Madrid to Spain's foreign minister.

The violence along Lebanon's border, which also killed two Israeli soldiers, was the deadliest escalation on the disputed frontier since the 2006 war between Hizbullah and Israel.

Israel's ambassador quickly pointed out that the council statement didn't mention the Israeli soldiers or condemn Hizbullah. "The Security Council seems to think that some lives have more value than others," Ron Prosor said in an emailed statement.

A council diplomat said Russia blocked a French-drafted press statement on Tuesday that would have condemned the Hizbullah attack on the Israeli soldiers as a violation of Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war as well as the death of the Spanish peacekeeper, saying it was "unbalanced."

The blocked statement, supported by Spain and many other council members, also expressed grave concern over the deterioration of the situation along both sides of the so-called Blue Line separating Lebanon and Israel, the diplomat said.

The senior U.N. official said a technical investigation on the ground, to determine the facts of what happened in the violence, should be completed in the next three days.

"We are straight away launching a board of inquiry to look into the wider aspects of all of this," said the official, who asked not to be named.

"These were violations (of ceasefire accords), but we need to know more," he said.

Oyarzun had called for a full inquiry to establish who was responsible for the death of the peacekeeper.