Beirut - Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said Monday
material confiscated from a garbage truck near a UNIFIL post in the
southern town is a 'non-explosive material.'
'After examining the material which were disovered in a carbage
truck trying to enter a UNIFIL base in southern Lebanon the tests
showed they contain no explosive material,' Murr said as he entered a
cabinet session.
He added the Lebanese security forces have released the suspects
arrested in connection with the incident.
On Sunday, the Italian contingent in the United Nations Interim
Forces in Southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) arrested two people disguised as
cleaners trying to smuggle 'plastic material that could be
explosives' into a UN base in southern Lebanon, a UN statement said.
The suspicious plastic was found in a garbage truck during a
routine search at the entrance of the Italian battalion's headquarter
in the village of Tebnine, southern Lebanon.
Italy has 2,500 troops in southern Lebanon, the largest
contingent working within UNIFIL.
The peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon grew from around 2,300
to 15,000, in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution in
August 2006 that halted 33 days of fighting between Israel and
Hezbollah.
Since December 2008, UNIFIL has taken extra precautionary measures
after receiving threats from fundamentalist groups with close links
to al-Qaeda terrorist network.
On June 25, 2007, six UN peacekeepers from the Spanish battalion
were killed and two others injured in a car bombing that targeted
their patrol in southern Lebanon.
dpa wh sc
Germany-Energy/Dutch/
ROUNDUP: Germany's RWE bids to take over Dutch utility Essent =
Essen, Germany (dpa) - Shrugging off recession and gloom, RWE, the
German electricity group, announced Monday a friendly cash bid of 9.3
billion euros (12.5 billion dollars) for Dutch energy group Essent.
Like its rival E.ON, Essen-based RWE is now so big that it cannot
expect regulatory clearance to take over any other German utility, so
it has had to look abroad for merger targets.
Essent retails power in several EU nations including Germany
itself.
A statement said RWE would gain 5.3 million new gas and electricity
customers, most in the Netherlands along with 250,000 of them in
Belgium and 1 million in Germany. RWE will finance the deal with
loans.
The takeover, which Essent said would forge the fourth-largest
energy supplier in Europe, could prove controversial, with some
consumer groups, as well as some competition watchdogs, already
worried that the utilities are too big.
RWE said at the end of last year it was also looking for
acquisitions in Britain, eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey.
RWE said in Essen it aimed to take over Essent's commercial
activities in gas and electricity. It said it would not acquire
Essent's distribution network, which will be put into new ownership
under a European Union policy known as unbundling.
Essent said that through a restructuring, its waste-disposal
business would also be excluded from the takeover.
Essent chief executive Michiel Boersma said: 'Essent will now team
up with a leading and respected foreign partner.'
The transaction would convert Arnhem-based Essent, which has a
workforce of 7,800, into the RWE operating company in the Netherlands
and Belgium, but RWE would retain the Essent brand.
An announcement said the two utility companies had already reached
agreement on the terms and conditions. Essent's top board supported it
and recommended that Essent's shareholders accept the offer.
The acquisition is the first for RWE since a new chief executive,
Juergen Grossmann, took over the Germany company in October 2007.
In a recent newspaper interview, Grossmann said the world financial
crisis had not affected RWE, but had made mergers cheaper.
'We can more today for the same money,' he told the Sueddeutsche
Zeitung.
Essent's gas and electricity sales, excluding turnover by its grid
and waste management divisions, totalled 6.5 billion euros last year.
RWE had sales nearly seven times as large, of 43 billion euros.
RWE said the takeover would make it 'one of the leading energy
suppliers in the Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux)
region.'
Essent's strong business as a generator of energy from renewable
sources - wind and biomass - would help RWE's efforts to increase its
renewables capacity to 4,500 megawatts by 2012, the statement said.
Both companies have also been experimenting with capturing carbon
dioxide and storing it underground.
Essent's principal shareholders at the moment are the Dutch
provincial administrations of Noord-Brabant, Limburg, Overijssel and
Groningen and four municipal groups.
RWE chief executive Grossmann called it 'a successful and
attractive company with strong market positions in gas and in the
power retail market in the Netherlands and Belgium.'
RWE already has a Dutch unit, RWE Energy Nederland, supplying gas
and electricity to 340,000 households and more than 50,000 businesses.
'Upon completion of the transaction, RWE will supply electricity to
over 22.5 million customers and gas to approximately 12.5 million
customers in Europe,' the statement said.
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