Rise rejects 'false promise' of Lebanon ceasefire
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has rejected the “false promise” of an immediate ceasefire in the spreading war between Israel and Hezbollah and says she would seek long-term peace during a trip to the Middle East beginning tomorrow.
The top US diplomat defended her decision not to meet with Hezbollah leaders or their Syrian backers during her visit.
“Syria knows what it needs to do, and Hezbollah is the source of the problem,” Rice said as she previewed her trip, which begins with a stop in Israel.
Rice said the US is committed to ending the bloodshed but not before certain conditions are met.
The Bush administration has said that Hezbollah must both turn over two Israeli soldiers whose capture set off the violence 10 days ago and stop firing missiles into Israel.
“We do seek an end to the current violence. We seek it urgently. We also seek to address the root causes of that violence,” Rice said. “A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo.”
The US has resisted international pressure to pressure its ally Israel to stop the fighting. The US position has allowed Israel more time to try to destroy what both nations consider a Hezbollah terrorist network in southern Lebanon.
In addition, the Bush administration was rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel after receiving a request last week, The New York Times reported. The munitions were part of a multimillion-dollar arms sale package approved last year that Israel could tap at any time, the Times reported in an article posted on its Web site last night.
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded an immediate ceasefire on Thursday and denounced the actions of both Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanon’s beleaguered prime minister also has asked for an immediate halt to the fighting.
Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said that Israel has destroyed about 40% of Hezbollah’s military capabilities.
“Most of the long-range (missiles) have been hit, a lot of the medium range, but they still have thousands and thousands of rockets, short-range and others,” Ayalon said in an interview.
He described the Israeli military assault as a “mop-up” operation, and said that Israel had no desire to repeat its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in 2000. Those two decades brought about the birth of Hezbollah.
“They overplayed their hand, they miscalculated,” Ayalon said of Hezbollah militants, based in southern Lebanon and supported by Syria and Iran.
Rice’s mission would be the first US diplomatic effort on the ground since the Israeli effort inside Lebanon began.
Asked why she did not go earlier and engage in quick-hit diplomacy to try to end the death and destruction that has gripped the region, she replied: “I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do.”
The crisis started last week when Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamic militant group that operates in southern Lebanon, captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel retaliated by bombing across Lebanon and slapping a naval blockade on the country. Hezbollah fired hundreds of missiles into Israel.
At least 335 people have been killed in Lebanon in the Israeli campaign, according to the Lebanese health minister. Thirty-four Israelis have been killed, including 19 soldiers.
Rice plans meetings in Jerusalem and the West Bank with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as sessions in Rome with representatives of European and moderate Arab governments that are meant to shore up the weak democratic government in Lebanon’s capital Beirut.
Rice’s trip resumes a role the US has long played as the key Middle East peace broker, but Rice is not expected to try to get a signed deal during her brief visit.
“I know that there are no answers that are easy, nor are there any quick fixes,” Rice said. “I fully expect that the diplomatic work for peace will be difficult.”
The US is relying on Arab and other intermediaries to pressure Hezbollah and Syria. The United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist group and has cut high-level ties to Damascus in a dispute over what it says is Syrian meddling in Lebanon.
Hezbollah also exerts political control in southern Lebanon, overshadowing the democratic central government. The UN-US plan for long-term stability would give international help to the Beirut government install its own Army troops, which it has been unable to do.
Hezbollah “extremists are trying to strangle it in its crib,” Rice said of the Lebanese government.
President Bush, asked what he hopes Rice will achieve on her trip, said he would discuss it with her when he returns to the White House on Sunday. He was speaking at a restaurant in Aurora, Colorado as he met with 10 members of the military who recently returned from Iraq.
Announcing plans earlier for a weekend meeting that Bush and Rice will have with Saudi officials, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: “This is part of the president’s broader diplomatic outreach on the developing situation in the Middle East.”
Bush and Rice will meet at the White House with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, chief of the Saudi National Security Council.
The plans emerged after two days of meetings in New York with Annan and envoys he sent to the region this week. Annan outlined basic terms of a proposed cease-fire and the longer-range goals to remove the Hezbollah threat in southern Lebanon in a speech on Thursday.
