United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday she believed a ceasefire to end fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon could be forged this week. Rice told reporters in Jerusalem that she would call for a United Nations resolution this week on the ceasefire and also the establishment of an international stabilisation force for Lebanon.
Israel suspended air strikes on southern Lebanon on Monday for 48 hours after a raid killed at least 54 civilians, mostly children, and triggered worldwide demands for a truce in the Jewish state’s war against Hezbollah.
Washington pressed for the suspension and the UN Security Council deplored Sunday’s bombing, the deadliest single attack in Israel’s nearly three-week war against the Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim guerrilla group. Thirty-seven children were killed.
The attack on the village of Qana prompted Lebanon’s government to call off scheduled talks with Rice and tell her she was not welcome until an unconditional ceasefire was in place.
US State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli said Israel’s decision to suspend air strikes would allow for an investigation into the attack, which occurred at a time of already heightened global alarm at the hundreds of civilian casualties in the war.
Israel would also coordinate with the United Nations to allow a 24-hour window for south Lebanon residents to leave the area if they wished, Ereli told reporters, adding the suspension should improve the flow of humanitarian aid.
The 48-hour halt in air strikes was announced after Rice held talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem throughout Sunday.
Rescue workers called off the search in Qana for bodies or survivors after hours of digging through the rubble with their hands, lifting out the twisted, dust-caked corpses of children.
The attack flattened a three-storey building. Many of the people inside were killed as they slept. Israel said it was unaware civilians were in the building and accused Hezbollah of firing rockets into northern Israel from Qana.
A Lebanese Foreign Ministry official told an emergency session of the UN Security Council that more than 60 people were killed. But police in Lebanon put the death toll at 54.
The 15-nation Security Council unanimously adopted a statement expressing ”extreme shock and distress” at the Qana killings. The statement did not call for an immediate truce, a measure opposed by the United States, but said the council would work urgently ”for a lasting settlement of the crisis”.
Annan ‘deeply dismayed’
Earlier, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had urged an immediate end to the fighting, saying he was already ”deeply dismayed” his previous calls had not been heeded.
Rice expressed sadness over Qana but stopped short of calling for an immediate truce. US President George Bush, blaming Hezbollah and its main allies Syria and Iran for the war, says the root causes of the conflict must be tackled before there can be lasting peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who ordered his forces into combat on July 12 when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, voiced ”deep sorrow” over Qana but vowed the war against the guerrillas would go on.
At least 545 people have been killed in Lebanon, although the health minister estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies. Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.
Hezbollah fired more than 140 rockets at Israel on Sunday, wounding six people, Israeli police said.
There was no official comment from Hezbollah on Israel’s decision but the group’s al-Manar television said the suspension was an ”American and Zionist attempt to absorb the world’s fury” over Qana. Earlier, Hezbollah had vowed to retaliate.
Ereli said while Israel had suspended air raids on southern Lebanon the Jewish state had the right to ”take action against targets preparing attacks against it”, a restatement of US policy that Israel has the right to defend itself.
Rice will leave Israel for Washington on Monday to work on a UN resolution that could achieve what the White House called a ”sustainable” ceasefire.
The United States, Israel’s chief ally, says the priority is to remove the threat that Hezbollah poses to the Jewish state.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, often at odds with Hezbollah, on Sunday thanked its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and ”all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon”.
Qana is already a potent symbol of Lebanese civilian deaths at Israeli hands. In April 1996, Israeli shelling killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at the base of UN peacekeepers in Qana during Israel’s ”Grapes of Wrath” bombing campaign.
International outrage over that attack helped force Israel to end a 17-day campaign that killed more than 200 Lebanese. – Reuters