Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defiantly declared that he would not quit, despite one of the harshest government inquiry commission reports in Israel’s history.

Israeli Cabinet minister Eitan Cabel will announce his resignation today in protest at the critical findings of the Lebanon war inquiry, his spokesman says.

Results of a long-awaited Israeli government probe into last year's war in Lebanon were delivered today to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The messy Lebanon war has cost Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert much of his political capital – and with approval ratings plummeting, he has been forced to shelve his ambitious West Bank pullout plan and is instead struggling to ride out a growing public storm over the government’s wartime bungles.

It is reprehensible that world leaders quibble over the wording of statements while innocent civilians die in the Israeli-Lebanon offensive, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said tonight.