The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution calling for an end to the conflict in Lebanon late on Friday night. Israel announced it would respect the plan, but said it would not call off a full-scale land invasion, launched on Friday, before Sunday at the earliest.
Ending weeks of fraught negotiations between the US and France, the resolution demanded a ”full cessation of hostilities”, authorising the deployment of up to 15 000 United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, to help Lebanese armed forces take control as Israeli troops withdraw.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had called George Bush to signal his agreement, and will ask his Cabinet to approve the plan on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesperson Gideon Meir said. Until then, there will be no halt to a major Israeli ground offensive launched on Friday.
”The logic would be that even in the framework of this successful outcome, if you hand over to the Lebanese army in south Lebanon where you have Hezbollah removed from the territory, that makes [Lebanon’s] troubles a lot easier,” another foreign ministry spokesperson said.
The deal in New York followed a few hours of confusion after Mr Olmert shocked the UN by ordering a major ground offensive and rejecting the draft text as unacceptable, before quickly changing his mind. Lebanon made no immediate public response to the UN plan.
The focus will now move to how Israel and Hezbollah respond to the resolution, which calls for Hezbollah to end all attacks and for Israel to end ”offensive military operations”, leaving open the possibility of actions deemed defensive. Diplomats suggested there might be a 10-day space between a halt to hostilities and UN troops beginning to replace Israeli forces.
After increasingly frantic talks, diplomats appear to have found a middle way between Lebanon and Israel’s demands on an international force.
Lebanon had objected to authorising UN troops to use force to secure peace — a so-called ”chapter seven” mandate — and had insisted instead on a ”chapter six” force that would monitor the ceasefire and fire only in self-defence. Israel had vowed that its troops would not withdraw unless replaced by a sufficiently muscular buffer force.
The compromise language in the resolution stops short of explicitly authorising UN troops to use force, and denies Israel its demand for a completely new multinational force. ”You never get a deal like this with everybody getting everything that they want,” said Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary.
From New York, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that the international troops would be empowered ”to create security in the south and to secure the arms embargo” against Hezbollah.
In a concession by the Lebanese there is no mention of Sheba’a Farms, the disputed territory Israel continued to occupy after withdrawing from Lebanon in 2002. Nor is there a demand for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel to be freed. The resolution emphasises the importance of freeing the Israeli troops held by Hezbollah, but does not formally demand it. — Guardian Unlimited Â