HAIFA, Aug 28: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced on Monday that a government inquiry would examine the running of the Lebanon war, but stopped short of ordering a more powerful state commission.

“My government will name a commission... that will be charged with examining the conduct of the government” during the war, Olmert said.

The commission will be headed by Nahum Admoni, a former chief of Israel’s spy agency.

The inquiry will include a reserve general and two university professors and “will examine the government’s conduct during the war and all other aspects that it decides necessary”.

The increasingly unpopular premier rejected calls to establish a state commission, Israel’s most powerful type of public inquiry, to probe the war.

“A state commission is not what we need as it would paralyse for a long time the political and military leadership, while the war is not completely over and the threats can resume,” he said.

Commission members are chosen by the supreme court and the body can subpoena witnesses and order the police to conduct searches in order to collect evidence.—AFP