Israel Sets Terms for Cease-Fire
Associated Press | July 17, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Diplomatic efforts to end Israeli-Hezbollah fighting gained traction Monday, with Israeli officials saying the country would agree to halt fighting if its two captured soldiers were returned and Islamic guerrillas withdrew from the border.
Publicly, the officials continued to insist their goal was to dismantle Hezbollah. But senior aides to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert office said he told his Italian counterpart, Romano Prodi, that Israel would accept cease-fire terms of Hezbollah releasing the Israeli soldiers and withdrawing from the border.
On Sunday, Lebanese officials said that Israel had sent the terms of a possible cease-fire through Italian mediators. The terms were the release of the two captured soldiers, and a Hezbollah pullback to roughly 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Hezbollah-patron Iran, meanwhile, said a cease-fire was feasible and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special political adviser emerged from talks with Lebanon's prime minister to say he would present Israel "concrete ideas" to end the fighting.
"We have made some promising first efforts on the way forward," Vijay Nambiar told reporters, while warning that "much diplomatic work needs to be done" before the conflict ends.
Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki - in Damascus, Syria for talks with Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa - said a cease-fire and prisoner exchange would be acceptable and fair .
"We believe that we should think of an acceptable and fair (deal) to resolve this," he said. "In fact, there can be a cease-fire followed by a prisoner swap."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for sending international forces to southern Lebanon. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would consider dispatching troops, and the European Union announced it was considering a peacekeeping force as well.
Overnight attacks by Israeli warplanes and big guns killed 17 people and wounded at least 53, Lebanese security officials said. The death toll since fighting began on Wednesday after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers has climbed above 200 - 209 in Lebanon, 24 in Israel.
Israeli government spokesman Asaf Shariv said ground troops entered southern Lebanon, attacked Hezbollah bases near the border and quickly returned inside Israel.
A large explosion was heard across Beirut Monday evening in the heavily hit southern suburbs where Hezbollah's headquarters is located. In the south, nine civilians were killed, including two children, when an afternoon strike hit a bridge at the entrance to the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanese security officials said.
An Israeli missile also targeted a building housing Al-Manar offices in the southern market town of Nabatiyeh, wounding 7 people.
Hezbollah Katyusha rockets landed in the Israeli town of Atlit, about 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of the border and 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the port city of Haifa. Nobody was hurt. Later, guerrillas fired three rocket barrages into Haifa, destroying a three-story building and wounding at least three people, Israeli medics said.
Guerrilla rockets killed eight Israelis in an attack on Haifa Sunday in what was believed to be Hezbollah's deadliest-ever single attack on Israel.
A Lebanese TV station also showed video of what it said an F-16 fighter jet crashing in the Jamjour district near the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut. Israel said none of its aircraft had been hit or had crashed. Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said the aircraft was a helicopter gunship.
A Lebanese security official said the object was a fuel tank dropped by an Israeli aircraft over Kfar Chima, a town near southern Beirut. After it dropped the fuel tank, the aircraft fired two missiles at three cargo trucks in the area, killing four people and wounding two others, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
It was not clear why the fuel tank was dropped by the aircraft.
Israel said its planes and artillery struck 60 targets in Lebanon overnight in retaliation for Sunday's 20-rocket barrage on Haifa, Israel's third-largest city and one that had not been hit before the current round of fighting began.
Israel also kept up pressure in the Gaza Strip as it searched for a kidnapped soldier, bombing the empty Palestinian Foreign Ministry building for the second time in less than a week in what it said was a warning to the ruling Hamas party.
Israel launched the offensive on June 25 after Hamas-linked militants carried out a cross-border attack on a military outpost, killing two soldiers and capturing one other. Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas joined the fray last week, attacking a military patrol in northern Israel, killing eight soldiers and capturing two others.
Israeli officials accused Syria and Iran of providing Lebanese guerrillas with sophisticated weapons, saying the missiles that hit Haifa had greater range and heavier warheads than those Hezbollah had fired before.
Speaking on the margin of the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Blair said the fighting would not stop until the conditions for a cease-fire were created.
"The only way is if we have a deployment of international forces that can stop bombardment coming into Israel," he said.
Annan appealed to Israel to spare civilian lives and infrastructure. The G-8 nations, who had struggled to reach a consensus on the escalating warfare between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, have expressed concern on the "rising civilian casualties" and urged both sides to stop the violence.
Bush expressed his frustration in a discussion with Blair before the G-8 leaders began their final lunch.
"See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--- and it's over," Bush said. He also suggested that Annan call Syrian President Bashar Assad to "make something happen."
Foreigners continued to flee and several nations drew up plans to get their citizens out. Russia sent an airliner to Jordan on Monday, and Britain also airlifted 40 of its citizens from Lebanon over the weekend and another group was taken out on Monday. A French ship was due to arrive in the port later Monday to evacuate Europeans.
In their raids on Beirut Monday, Israeli planes killed two people in the harbor and started a large fire that was later extinguished.
The Israeli jets also set fire to a gas storage tank in the northern neighborhood of Dawra and another fuel storage tank at Beirut airport, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. The airport has been closed since Thursday, when Israeli jets blasted its runways.
Israeli missiles also blasted southern Beirut, causing three explosions that shook the city. The targets were not immediately clear, but Hezbollah has a host of offices, clinics, schools, social clubs and the homes of its leaders in the southern suburbs.
Elsewhere in Lebanon, Israeli planes again hit the Beirut to Damascus highway, which has been targeted as part of a strategy of severing Lebanon's links to the outside world. Monday's attacks struck the highway in the eastern Bekaa Valley and killed two people.
In another attack, eight Lebanese soldiers were killed when Israeli aircraft attacked a small fishing port at Abdeh in northern Lebanon near a highway leading to Syria. Witnesses and security officials said 12 Lebanese soldiers were wounded in the attack.
The Israeli military warned residents of south Lebanon to flee, promising heavy retaliation after the Haifa assault.
In one airstrike on southern Lebanon early Monday, an Israeli missile missed its apparent target - a Hezbollah site - and hit a private house, killing two people, according to security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
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