Diplomacy moves to the fore:
Rice: Hezbollah Comments a 'Positive Step'
Israel Continues Air Attacks on Lebanon; Hezbollah Rockets Fall in Israel
By Robin Wright and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 29, 2006; 11:28 AM
DOHA, Qatar, July 29 -- En route to a new round of Middle East negotiations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday that she was encouraged by Hezbollah's general agreement to disarm and accept an international force in Lebanon, which she called a "positive step" that also strengthens the Lebanese government in the illusive search for a cease-fire.
"Obviously we are all trying to get to a cease-fire as quickly as possible, so I'll take this as a positive step," Rice told reporters on her plane flying from Malaysia to a refueling stop in Qatar. "I think there are a lot of elements that are coming together."
Hezbollah signed on to the proposal "in principle" after negotiations Thursday with the government of Lebanon. But Hezbollah held out the caveat that more talks will be held after agreement is reached by the U.N. Security Council on an international force on the border, according to Hezbollah and Lebanese government officials. The radical Shiite Muslim movement would maintain its heavily armed militia in the south during the talks.
Rice returns to the Middle East as fighting continues. Israeli air strikes hit southern Lebanon again and Hezbollah rockets fell in northern Israel. Television images showed repeated air warning sirens in Haifa, Israel, and smoke rising from explosions in Tyre, Lebanon. It was not immediately clear the extent of damage in either area.
Hezbollah officials and Western news services reported that Israeli bombing near the Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh Satuday killed a woman and her five children in their home. Israeli government spokesman Avi Pozner, when asked about the reports on CNN, said if true, "We regret it profoundly," but he cautioned that the public "has to understand Hezbollah hides behind civilians."
Also Saturday, the Israeli government dismissed as unnecessary a proposal from a U.N. official for a 72-hour cease-fire to allow humanitarian aid to be distributed in southern Lebanon.
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egland had floated the request to suspend hostilities after his recent trip to the region.
But Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said Israel's decision to open a corridor for humanitarian supplies to pass through made a cease-fire unnecessary and that the Jewish state would await a formal proposal from the United Nations before determining whether to agree to a cease-fire.
Egland's pitch, "was not a real proposal," Meir said. "If there is a proposal it has to come from an official body."
He said Israel had agreed to allow a U.N. representative to join its humanitarian relief center in Tel Aviv to help coordinate safe passage for aid convoys. Israel has recently allowed aid shipments through its blockade of Lebanon and facilitated the passage of convoys to some Lebanese cities. But humanitarian workers have complained that distributing necessary supplies to places hardest hit by the conflict is too dangerous because of fighting in the country's south.
"Everything from a humanitarian point of view is working, except that there's a severe problem in the south because Hezbollah does not let aid reach villages," said Meir. "They are maximizing damage to civilian population and we are trying to minimize it."
In his weekly radio address in Washington, President Bush said Rice is renewing her efforts in the Middle East "to seize this opportunity to achieve lasting peace and stability for both [Israel and Lebanon]. . . . We must recognize that Lebanon is the latest flashpoint in a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the region."
Rice told reporters on her plane that she is still working on many of the details for a possible plan to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. "I don't expect to present somebody with a 'Here are the five points that you must expect.' There has to be give and take," she added. "This is difficult."
But negotiations now center on several arrangements, not all of them would have to happen immediately or even at the same time, according to U.S. and European officials involved with the diplomacy. They are designed to address the concerns of all three major parties impacted by the hostilities -- Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah. They include:
-- The central element --- and deal-breaker -- is disarmament of Hezbollah. But this does not have to happen before a cease-fire or even soon, U.S. officials say. The goal is to get a formal commitment and to outline arrangements, possibly to eventually bring members of Hezbollah's militia into the Lebanese Army reserves or in another capacity and to get their arms into a government-controlled depot. European envoys point to some similarities with the disarmament of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.
--The timing for such a move can be worked out among the Lebanese, U.S. officials say. The aim is to neutralize the militant Shiite movement as a threat to Israel, U.S. and European officials say. Although the movement remains on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, Rice has made clear on this trip that the Bush administration is not trying to isolate the group from Lebanese politics or achieve its total elimination.
-- A large, robust and well-armed international force will deploy to initially help with humanitarian relief and refugees, but ultimately retrain and back up the Lebanese Army as it deploys throughout the country for the first time since the civil war erupted in1975, U.S. and European officials say. The new force will act as a "spine" for the Lebanese Army, said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of the ongoing diplomacy. Part of its mandate will almost certainly be to insure that new arms do not come into Lebanon through the Syria border, Turkey, the ports or Beirut airport, the sources say. The implicit goal in this is also to prod Hezbollah to embrace its Lebanese identity, rather than remain what a senior U.S. official called "Tehran on the Mediterranean," a reference to its strong relationship with Iran.
-- The release of two Israeli soldiers, whose abduction on July 12 triggered the crisis. Up in the air is still the prospect of an eventual release of some Lebanese or Palestinian prisoners held in Israel jails, European officials say. Hezbollah officials said a long-sought prisoner swap was its goal in kidnapping the Israelis. This kind of "no-deal deal," in which one side releases prisoners, claiming there was no deal, is followed by the release of prisoners by the other side at a later date.
-- A sensitive issue still up in the air is the fate of Shebaa Farms, the last remaining disputed area on the border, say U.S. and European officials. It is on the corner of Lebanon, Syria and Israel, which occupied it in the 1967 war. The United Nations considers the area Syrian territory but Hezbollah claims it for Lebanon, which Syria once -- but only once -- endorsed. Before the July 12 cross border raid, it was the site of the vast majority of clashes between Hezbollah and Israel after its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. European officials and some U.S. officials believe this needs to be settled to eliminate the flashpoint -- and Hezbollah's justification for keeping its arms.
-- A massive humanitarian effort and a donors conference are to be organized as quickly as possible to get Lebanon back on its feet. U.S. officials are deeply concerned about Lebanon's already troubled economy deepening the political and military instability.
Rice will meet Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem Saturday night to begin tough negotiations on the specifics of a multi-faceted deal for a cease-fire. "I'm now going into some very intensive, not easy give-and-take in Israel," she told reporters. "These are really hard and emotional decisions on both sides."
Hezbollah's tentative agreement during a heated six-hour cabinet meeting is the first hopeful signal that a cease-fire can be achieved to end 18 days of hostilities that have claimed more than 450 mainly civilians in Lebanon and more than 51 civilians and soldiers in Israel.
Still, a Hezbollah official in Beirut said Saturday that any agreement reached on the Lebanon fighting cannot provide political gain for Israel or the United States, Reuters reported. Naim Kassem, the group's deputy chief, told the Reuter news agency in an interview when asked about U.S. demands the Hezbollah disarm, "American and Israel have no right to get a result from their defeat. There is no [military] victory for America and Israel [as a basis] for them to make political gains."
Although Rice had not seen the full details of the Lebanon meeting led by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, she said there were "some very good elements" in the accounts she has seen.
America's top diplomat praised Siniora, calling the cabinet meeting agreement "quite an achievement" since he convinced a deeply divided government of Christians and Muslims, moderates and religious militants, to endorse the approach he outlined during his impassioned speech to the international conference in Rome Wednesday. The common element in both Rice's diplomacy and Siniora's plan is fulfillment of principles already enshrined in two documents: U.N. Resolution 1559, which was passed in mid-2004, and the 1989 Taif Accord brokered by Saudi Arabia that ended Lebanon's civil war a year later. Both call for the disarming of all Lebanon's militias and the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty throughout the country.
The United States is not pushing for a specific deadline for a cease-fire, Rice told reporters on her plane. But there is a new momentum generated by the feverish diplomacy, including a meeting at the United Nations Monday of a working group to sort out the details for a new international force, which is expected to number between 10,000 and 20,000. Rice said she insisted that the meeting be Monday, not later in the week, to generate a plan as soon as possible.
The United States is particularly interested in looking for "ready forces" that can be quickly deployed with their own "lift" or rapid deployment capability, communications and planning units, Rice said.
That meeting will be followed, possibly as early as Tuesday, by a Security Council meeting of foreign ministers to work out language for a new resolution that will embody the elements of the plan Rice is now negotiating. Rice is expected to return to the United States on Monday, barring a change in her still evolving schedule, and would probably attend the New York meeting, U.S. officials said.
Rice said the Lebanese cabinet vote was critical because it showed that the weak government could function as a united body. "That is in and of itself very important. This has not been easy for Siniora," she said. "Everyone knows it is a very complicated coalition. . . . That he is able to go back and bring his government together around a way forward is very encouraging." |
