The White House said Wednesday there can be no cease-fire in Lebanon until Hezbollah stops attacking Israel, but Lebanon blamed Israel and demanded an immediate cease-fire.
“We would love a cease-fire yesterday,” White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters. “But, unfortunately, the conditions for a durable and sustainable peace are not yet present.
“And most importantly, the people who started the fight, Hezbollah, have given absolutely no indications, those who are involved in military activities, that they intend to cease and desist” he said. “Quite the contrary.”
Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, who accompanied Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Rome for an international conference on the conflict, hinted a cease-fire is a long way off.
“There was great agreement here that in order to have a cease-fire, you’re going to have to have an international force in place to help support the government of Lebanon in its ability to control its country and disarm Hezbollah over the longer run,” Hughes told CNN.
But then Hughes appeared to createa catch-22 by ruling out deployment of such a force until the parties stop firing on each other.
“That international force is not going to shoot its way in,” she said. “You’ve got to have a cessation of hostilities in order to be able to have an international force to come in.”
Rice ruled out any cease-fire that would amount to a “return to the status quo,” suggesting she does not want Hezbollah to be able to rearm for future attacks on Israel.
“We want most urgently to end the violence on a basis that this time will be sustainable because, unfortunately, this is a region that has had too many broken cease-fires, too many spasms of violence followed then by other spasms of violence,” she said in a joint news conference with other world leaders.
One of those leaders was Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, who challenged Rice by calling for “an immediate cease-fire.”
“The more we delay the cease-fire, the more we are going to witness more are being killed, more destruction and more aggression against the civilians in Lebanon,” he said.
Instead of echoing the Bush administration’s position that Hezbollah started the fight, Siniora praised the group that has long controlled south Lebanon along the Israeli border. The U.S. considers the group a terrorist organization
“Hezbollah played a very important role in the liberation of the territories that were occupied by Israel,” he said.
