After more than two weeks of fierce fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas, world leaders signaled a sense of urgency Friday to end the destabilizing conflict as Hezbollah launched its deepest missile strike into Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to return to the region Saturday for the second round of shuttle diplomacy in a week. In the hours before her arrival, Hezbollah political leaders reversed course Friday and agreed to join a Lebanese government peace proposal aimed at stopping the fighting in the country’s south.
Israel immediately dismissed Hezbollah’s offer.
At the UN, Secretary General Kofi Annan and other diplomats said discussions were under way on a possible 72-hour truce to allow the UN to evacuate children, the elderly and disabled from southern Lebanon, as well as put together the international force and formulate terms for a permanent cease-fire.
“A cease-fire in these situations will have to be negotiated,” Annan said. “I called for cessation of hostilities, which, hopefully, will lead to cease-fire.”
The secretary general said he had convened a meeting for early next week of countries that might contribute troops to the international force. On Tuesday, European Union countries will meet in Brussels to discuss troop contributions, said Emyr Jones Parry, British ambassador to the UN.
But the seven-point Lebanese government peace plan is not likely to satisfy Israeli or U.S. officials.
“We’d take anything that Hezbollah says with a grain of salt,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. Referring to international talks this week in Italy, he added, “If they say they are on board with what was presented in Rome by the Lebanese government, I think they are being disingenuous.”
The plan, for example, does not include the multinational force favored by the Bush administration. Instead it calls for beefing up the existing but largely ineffective 2,000-member UN force already in place in the south, as well as a prisoner exchange for the two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah on July 12.
Ghaleb Abuzeinab, a member of the Hezbollah politburo, said in an interview that the group’s political leaders decided to take the step after showing that its militia could hold its own on the battlefield.
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“The Israeli enemy has not accomplished its aims, so now is the time to find a way out of the impasse,” Abuzeinab said.
Israel’s Regev took the opposite view.
“Obviously the fighting is very difficult, and we have taken some casualties,” Regev said. “However, this is a sign that Hezbollah doesn’t feel it has the upper hand in this conflict, and that our strategy is putting pressure on them.”
Israeli forces continued to pound Lebanon with heavy bombing Friday. Israel also reported Friday that an attack on what officials called a Hezbollah base in the Bekaa Valley the day before had killed Nur Shalhoub, whom it identified as a senior Hezbollah official.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced it used a new rocket, the Khaibar-1, to strike the northern Israeli town of Afula in the deepest attack in Israeli territory yet. Israeli authorities said the rocket was probably a renamed Fajr-5.
Police said seven rockets hit outside Afula but caused no injuries. Guerrillas also fired more than 100 smaller rockets at several northern Israeli towns Friday, the Israeli army said.