Rice heads for Israel

2006-07-24 07:27

Sidon - Israeli ground forces made another foray into Lebanon overnight on Monday as the US secretary of state joined the diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the Israeli bombardment and Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The Israeli military said troops crossed into Lebanon at daybreak on Monday, but Lebanese officials couldn't immediately confirm such an incursion.

Israel Radio reported that the forces were moving on the town of Bint Jbail in southern Lebanon, known as a stronghold of Hezbollah guerrillas, after a heavy overnight artillery barrage in the area. Over the weekend, other Israeli ground troops took control of the hilltop town of Maroun al-Ras, another Hezbollah centre, after a fierce battle, the military said.

The military said its forces were operating north of Maroun al-Ras on Monday morning but would not confirm the radio report.

After French and German envoys visited the region, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was heading to Israel on her first mission to the Mideast since the violence began. President George W Bush's chief of staff said on Sunday international peacekeepers might be needed in Lebanon to help end the fighting.

Priority 'for a ceasefire'

Mideast diplomats, meanwhile, were pressing Syria to stop backing Hezbollah in a bid to stop the warfare in Lebanon and Israel signaled a policy shift, saying it would accept an international force - preferably from Nato - on its border to ensure the peace in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in remarks published on Monday that an Israeli ground invasion would not protect Israel from Hezbollah rocket attacks.

He said the priority is for a ceasefire and was open to discussing ideas on how to end the crisis, sparked July 12 by a Hezbollah cross-border raid in which two Israeli soldiers were captured.

Apart from the ground operation, a precarious calm prevailed over Lebanon and northern Israel on Monday. There have been no rocket attacks on northern Israel since the previous evening and no airstrikes reported by the Lebanese media since late on Sunday, a break from the previous 12 days that saw incessant exchanges.

En route to the region, Rice said the United States' poor relationship with Syria is overstated and indicated an openness to working with Damascus to resolve the crisis in the Middle East.

Rice has tried to walk delicately between supporting the Lebanese government, while also not dictating to its ally Israel how it should handle its own security. Her posture has frustrated numerous allies.

"We all want to urgently end the fighting. We have absolutely the same goal," Rice said. But she added that if the violence ends only to restart within weeks, "then all of the carnage that Hezbollah launched by its illegal activities - abducting the soldiers and then launching rocket attacks - we will have got nothing from that".

More foreigners evacuated

With Israel and the US saying a real ceasefire isn't possible until Hezbollah is reined in, Arab heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia were pushing Syria to end its support for the guerrillas, Arab diplomats in Cairo said.

The two moderate Arab governments were prepared to spend heavily from Egypt's political capital in the region and Saudi Arabia's vast financial reserves to break Damascus from the guerrillas and Iran, the diplomats said.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the military wouldn't launch a full-fledged invasion but instead carry out a series of small scale raids into the south. Peretz said that once the offensive had got Hezbollah away from the border, his country would be willing to see an international force move in to help the Lebanese army deploy across the south, where the guerrillas have held sway for years.

More foreigners evacuated Lebanon by sea from Beirut port. The European Union was sending a ship to the southern port of Tyre on Monday and Canadians were sending another ship on Tuesday to pick up stranded foreigners who wish to get out of the bomb-ravaged area, whose road access has been cut by the destruction of highways and bridges in Israeli airstrikes.

At least 381 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah fighters, according to security officials. At least 600 000 Lebanese have fled their homes, according to the WHO - with one estimate by Lebanon's finance minister putting the number at 750 000, nearly 20 percent of the population.

Israel's death toll stands at 36, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 19 soldiers killed in the fighting.

- SAPA