Making an unannounced visit to Beirut, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday refused a Lebanese government request to press Israel for an immediate cease-fire in their intensifying war and promised instead to send humanitarian aid to help stricken Lebanese.
After swooping into the city on a Marine helicopter because Beirut’s international airport has been bombed, Rice told reporters she was seeking “a durable way to end the violence.”
But in her talks with Lebanese leaders, she made it clear she would not ask Israel to halt its offensive, launched two weeks ago after fighters from the militant Hezbollah movement crossed the border and abducted two Israeli soldiers, unless a comprehensive settlement is reached that includes the disarmament of the Shiite militia.
Neither a cordial meeting with Prime Minister Fuad Siniora nor a testier meeting with parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, produced agreement. Instead, Lebanese politicians said Rice’s statements suggested there was little likelihood of an early end to the conflict and expressed regret that she did not endorse a cease-fire.
“We’re very disappointed with the blank check the U.S. has given to Israel and its army to destroy our country,” said Economy Minister Sami Haddad after the meetings. “We need an immediate cease-fire and we need this war to stop.”
The Lebanese request for a cease-fire was presented by Siniora, who greeted Rice with a kiss on each cheek at his office in central Beirut.
“Thank you for your courage and steadfastness,” Rice told Siniora before their closed-door talks began, and she later said one of her priorities was easing the suffering of ordinary Lebanese.
Vow of humanitarian aid
“I am deeply concerned about the Lebanese people and what they are enduring,” she said. “I am obviously concerned about the humanitarian situation.”
Rice pledged to send $30 million in humanitarian assistance, including 20,000 blankets. More than 600,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by the fighting and the death toll there is approaching 400.
U.S. and Lebanese officials described the meeting as productive.
“With this stop now, we, the United States, are firmly in the picture in leading the diplomacy,” Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said as Rice headed to Israel for talks with leaders there.
Rice’s meeting with Berri was frostier, according to Lebanese and U.S. officials. Berri is the leader of the Amal movement, a pro-Syrian Shiite group allied with Hezbollah who last week won the public endorsement of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to negotiate on behalf of Hezbollah in the crisis.
Berri insisted there could be no solution unless Israel agrees to exchange Lebanese prisoners for the two abducted Israeli soldiers–a position that Welch said is “not quite what we think.”
`Not unfriendly’ meeting
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“But it was not unfriendly or confrontational,” Welch added.
On her last stop, Rice met with political leaders from the March 14 movement, the loose political front of Christian, Sunni and Druze leaders that rallied to call for the ouster of Syrian troops after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri last year.
During the meeting, Rice made it clear that she would support a cease-fire only as part of a package under which Hezbollah would be disarmed and a viable security force deployed in southern Lebanon, according to Fouad Souaid, a Christian politician who attended the meeting.
With Lebanon’s government calling for an unconditional cease-fire, Hezbollah insisting on a prisoner exchange and Rice seeking a broad political settlement, the prospects for a halt to the hostilities look remote, Souaid said.
“She [Rice] wants a radical political settlement,” Souiad said. “This view is not shared by Nabih Berri and others, and I think we are going to face another cycle of violence.”
Most members of Lebanon’s coalition government support the U.S. calls for the implementation of UN Resolution 1559, passed in September 2004, that calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah’s militia and the deployment of Lebanon’s army throughout southern Lebanon, said Haddad, the economy minister (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
En route to Lebanon, Rice told reporters she could not support an end to the fighting without a political settlement, “only to have it restart in three weeks or three months.”
But the Lebanese government fears that allowing the fighting to continue risks destroying the country before a settlement is reached, Haddad said.
Rice’s visit to Beirut was kept under wraps because of security considerations, officials said. She is to hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Tuesday before heading to Rome for talks with Arab leaders on Wednesday.
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