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Americans flee Lebanon crisis

U.S. to transport at least 5,000 citizens from Lebanon today, amid criticism that action has been slow

BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS AND MOHAMAD BAZZI | Newsday Staff Correspondents

July 19, 2006

With Americans stuck in embattled Lebanon protesting that the United States is moving too slowly to get them out, the United States announced plans to begin a massive and potentially dangerous full-scale evacuation at dawn today.

One week after the crisis began, chartered cruise ships and amphibious ships will begin ferrying at least 5,000 U.S. citizens 125 miles northwest to Cyprus, American officials said. A smaller campaign to evacuate the sick and elderly by helicopter and other means has removed 350 people since Sunday.

Outside the gates of the U.S. Embassy, Californian Elie Kawkabani, who lives in Beirut, was angry about the delay.

"The embassy is providing us with sketchy information and they are being rude to us here at the gate," he said yesterday. "We have other options, like leaving through Syria, but they keep stringing us along day after day." Cable television network CNN showed e-mailed pictures of Americans in Lebanon holding up signs asking for help.

Guarded by U.S. Navy ships that are slowly assembling in the eastern Mediterranean, the relief operation may carry 2,000 or more of the 25,000 U.S. citizens in Lebanon to safety today if all goes well. The ships will be back from Cyprus the next day to continue the operation.

But while the port at Beirut has been quiet since it was attacked by Israel last week, the U.S. military said it was taking nothing for granted.

"I'm concerned about attacks on ships, you bet," Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh told Pentagon reporters last night from his headquarters in Bahrain. "We don't assume anything when we go into an environment like this." Walsh said U.S. Marines will be available to go ashore if trouble breaks out.

Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese militia that is waging an air war with Israel, showed last week that it is capable of inflicting damage on ships well off the coast, not just close by in port. It heavily damaged an Israeli gunship offshore with a sophisticated missile from Iran, and reportedly hit an Egyptian civilian ship as well.

Another controversy ignited in Washington over plans to charge U.S. citizens for the cost of the evacuation. The White House defended asking Americans to reimburse the estimated $150 cost of their passage, but Democrats said it was unconscionable to charge people in such distress. Last night, aides to two Republican senators told CNN the fees would be waived.

State Department Assistant Secretary Maura Harty said the U.S. Embassy had decided it was too dangerous to evacuate people by road to Syria, as some smaller countries have done, because two of three roads have been bombed out and a third is heavily damaged and subject to attack.

"We decided that it was far more prudent to take a measure of the situation on the ground and to, in fact, begin to affect a sea-lift as a much safer alternative," Harty told reporters.

France started a sea lift from Beirut on Monday, hiring a Greek ferry that took 1,200 people, including some Americans, to safety. Asked why the French had to evacuate American citizens, Joel Godeau, the French consul general in Beirut, said: "There are some Americans on board our ship because the American officials may not have been able to help their citizens as much as they wanted to." He said the French government was not charging its citizens to evacuate them. Even the non-French citizens on the boat won't have to pay anything, he said.

Lebanese officials said the French were the quickest to contact them to make arrangements for evacuations. The officials said the French also organized the best evacuation plan so far and got information to their citizens in a timely manner.

An official at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon conceded that the French had led the way.

"We've learned from the way the French did it, so our systems are ready to go," the official said. "You wait for your call, they tell you where to go, and you're ready to go."

One U.S. executive of a private refugee group said the United States faced extraordinary problems with its evacuation.

"I was thinking all these European governments managed to move ahead with their evacuations; what's happening with us?" the executive said. "But we have greater numbers and are a bigger target because we're the Americans."

A staffer from another private aid organization operating in the region was less sympathetic.

"France was in there quickly; others were there quickly. From the facts as they appear, it seems that they are a little behind the ball," the staffer said.

Phelps wrote from Washington, Bazzi from Beirut. The story was supplemented with Associated Press reports.

STILL ON THE OFFENSIVE

Israel says its offensive in Lebanon could last several more weeks and involve large numbers of ground forces, casting doubt on efforts to broker a cease-fire.

Israel strikes a Lebanese army base outside Beirut, killing at least 11 soldiers and wounding 35.

At least nine people are killed when a bomb hits a house in the Lebanese village of Aitaroun.

Hezbollah rockets destroy a three-story house in northern Israel and kill a man in the town of Nahariya.

Dozens of Americans are flown out of Lebanon by helicopter while others wait for a passenger ship to take them to Cyprus.

Israeli tanks move into a refugee camp across from the Palestinian town of Deir al-Balah. Incursion is preceded by several hours of tank movements on the Israeli side.

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U.S. to transport at least 5,000 citizens from Lebanon today, amid criticism that action has been slow

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