Brussels, 25/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United National Environmental Programme (UNEP) has told Friends of the Earth Europe and Friends of the Earth Middle East that Lebanon has formally requested an environmental impact assessment of this summer's war with Israel. The two environmental NGOs, which have been calling for such an assessment from mid-August, welcomed the UNEP's positive reaction in sending a team from its “Post-Conflict Branch” to Lebanon, and urged Israel to follow Lebanon's example, says a press release. Gidon Bromberg, Israeli Director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, appealed from Tel Aviv for the Israeli government to officially ask UNEP to send a team to northern Israel. Fouad Hamdam, Director of Friends of the Earth Europe, said, “An independent investigation of the environmental impact of the war in Lebanon will remove emotions and politics from the issue of environmental protection. But the environmental impact assessment in Israel as well as Lebanon. Documenting the consequences of war on their shared marine environment would highlight the loss to both nations. This would hopefully dissuade Hisbullah and Israel from recommencing the fighting”. (see EUROPE 9243 on EU aid to Lebanon following the oil spillage caused by Israeli bombing which, at the end of July, destroyed a storage tank at the Jieh power plant, 30 km south of Beirut).