ARABS-ISRAEL - July 7 - Beirut Military Court To Try Sharon, Peres.

Military court will take evidence from 24 witnesses cited in a case brought against Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and FM Shimon Peres over the 1982 massacres at Palestinian refugee camps. Most of the witnesses are survivors of the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut which were carried out by Christian militia after Israeli troops invaded the capital when Sharon was defence minister. The case has been brought by lawyer May Khansa, close to Hizbollah, against "butcher" Sharon and Peres, alleging 73 "crimes" against Lebanon since Israel was founded in 1948. Other alleged offences include the kidnapping of Hizbollah leaders Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustapha Dirani, who are still being held in Israel, the assassination of Hizbollah Secretary-General Abbas Mussawi in 1992 and shelling which killed 105 Lebanese in Qana, southern Lebanon. The government report on the Sabra and Shatila massacres, in which between 800 and 2,000 people died, was destroyed by fire during the Lebanese civil war which ended in 1990. Citing the results of an inquiry carried out by Judge Assad Diab, now social affairs minister, it quoted two witnesses but gave a detailed description of the scene after the massacres. A copy of the report was also given to then president Amine Gemayel, who said it had been destroyed and arson of a foundation which he headed.

(The Israeli Kahana Commission of Inquiry in 1983 found Sharon indirectly responsible for the killings, prompting the former general's resignation as defence minister and years in the political wilderness before his election as prime minister in February. Belgian prosecutors have requested that a war crimes case, based on class-action suits filed against Sharon by an ad-hoc Arab group and by survivors of the 1982 massacres be considered admissible. A former militia official, Elias Hobeika, implicated in the massacres, said he was ready to testify in Brussels, adding: "For 19 years now, I have been carrying the weight of this accusation without having had the opportunity to prove my innocence"). The UN has said it would give the governments of Israel and Lebanon a video filmed the day after three Israeli soldiers were abducted by Hizbollah, but will first alter the tape to obscure faces of presumed members of the Lebanese militant group. (The move, which a UN official said was intended to protect UN troops in southern Lebanon, was likely to draw ire from Hizbollah and the Israelis - and comes after a series of blunders in UN handling of the sensitive footage. Announcing the decision, Jean-Marie Guehenno, under-secretary general for peacekeeping, said the UN was handing over the tape out of concern for the soldiers' families. "In our view, nothing on that tape sheds light on the circumstances of the abduction or on the conditions of the abductees", he said).