[ppi] [ppiindia] Rice Outlines Proposal to Deploy Force In Lebanon

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400050.html?referrer=email


Rice Outlines Proposal to Deploy Force In Lebanon
Plan for Buffer Zone on Border Greeted Skeptically in Beirut

By Robin Wright and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; Page A01 



BEIRUT, July 24 -- On an unannounced trip to ravaged Beirut, Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice outlined a plan Monday to deploy an international force, 
possibly led by NATO, in a buffer zone just inside Lebanon for 60 to 90 days, 
after which it would expand its mission to help the Lebanese army regain 
control of the south, Lebanese and U.S. officials said.

The force would also help train the army, which according to U.S. officials now 
has neither the will nor the means to disarm Hezbollah, Lebanon's last private 
militia.

But Rice's plan to end the conflict, prop up the Lebanese government and weaken 
Hezbollah was greeted with skepticism by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, as well 
as Lebanon's top elected Shiite official and other leaders. Siniora and the 
speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, a Shiite with close ties to Hezbollah, 
warned that Hezbollah was unlikely to accept any foreign military presence in 
its traditional stronghold in heavily Shiite southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has 
already rejected calls to disarm.

Rice released her proposal, the first major U.S. diplomatic move since the 
crisis began, as Israeli tanks and troops pushed about a half-mile farther 
inside south Lebanon on Monday. They met stiff resistance from entrenched 
Hezbollah fighters around the town of Bint Jbeil, which is roughly two miles 
inside the border. Meanwhile, Hezbollah fired 80 rockets into northern Israel, 
wounding more than 20 civilians, two of them seriously, according to Israeli 
military officials.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and 14 others were wounded in the fighting. 
Israeli military officials said they are attempting to secure a roughly 
15-square-mile region that they describe as a center of Hezbollah operations. 
Hezbollah has killed 24 Israeli soldiers and 17 civilians since the crisis 
broke out 13 days ago. More than 60 soldiers have been wounded.

The Israeli air force said it struck about 70 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon 
Monday. Israeli strikes have killed at least 384 Lebanese, the vast majority of 
them civilians, during the crisis, the Associated Press reported. The news 
service also reported that the United Nations said four U.N. peacekeepers were 
wounded Monday, one of them seriously, in south Lebanon.

[Early Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, an Israeli missile struck a 
house in the southern Lebanon town of Nabatiyeh, killing seven people and 
wounding one, hospital and security officials said.]

In Beirut, U.S. officials said that Siniora promised to look more fully at 
Rice's plan and explore it with others in his government, chosen in elections 
last year. "He was receptive to our ideas. He gave us enough to keep going. 
There were no show-stoppers," said a U.S. official traveling with Rice. "We 
came away convinced that Siniora and the U.S. are on the same page, working 
toward the same ends."

But U.S. officials also conceded that Lebanon's weak government also faces its 
own heavy lifting. After flying in by military helicopter from Cyprus, Rice 
praised Siniora for his "courage and steadfastness."

On the first leg of her diplomatic effort, Rice focused heavily on humanitarian 
issues. She announced that the U.S. government is pledging $30 million in aid 
as part of a new international drive to raise $150 million for Lebanon. The 
U.S. aid will come largely in the form of goods, including 100,000 medical 
kits, 20,000 blankets and 2,000 plastic sheets that the U.S. military will 
begin delivering Tuesday.

But Siniora pressed Rice for an immediate cease-fire. The United States is 
coming under growing Arab and European pressure because of the humanitarian 
crisis, with about 750,000 displaced people in Lebanon, a country of 4 million 
people.

The sequence of next steps is also becoming an issue, U.S. officials said. Arab 
demands have focused on first achieving an immediate cease-fire, before 
considering other measures such as arrangements to disarm Hezbollah and release 
two Israeli soldiers taken captive by Hezbollah on July 12 in an incident that 
sparked the crisis. The Bush administration has backed Israel's campaign to 
cripple the Shiite militia, which has fired more than 1,000 rockets into 
Israel, and the United States and Israel are demanding the immediate release of 
the Israeli soldiers.

Rice told Berri that she was "deeply concerned" about the Lebanese and "what 
they are enduring." President Bush had personally asked her to make Lebanon the 
first stop of her Middle East mission, she said. But she also told Berri, whose 
mainstream Shiite Amal party has worked politically with Hezbollah, that "the 
situation on the border cannot return to what it was before July 12."

After her five-hour visit under heavy guard through a Beirut that was suddenly 
quiet, Rice flew back to Cyprus, then on to Israel, where she had a working 
dinner with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

On the battlefield, Israeli soldiers, encountering a seasoned Hezbollah 
guerrilla force, say they have killed dozens of gunmen fighting with guided 
anti-tank missiles, mortars and small arms from houses, tunnels and bunkers in 
the past few days.

"They're in the forests and inside hiding places in town. They hide in holes in 
the ground," said Lt. Shahar Mintz, 20, who serves in a tank battalion 
operating inside Lebanon. "They have so many places to hide from the 
airstrikes, so we have to send in the infantry. It can be dangerous."

Mintz spoke from Avivim, an Israeli farming community a half-mile from the 
hilltop Lebanese town of Maroun al-Ras, where Israel's ground operation has 
focused in recent days. Busloads of soldiers mustered in the mostly abandoned 
town, painting their faces green and black before walking into Lebanon.

Columns of four to five tanks waited to be sent across the border. At least a 
dozen ambulances awaited the wounded. Israeli unmanned drone aircraft buzzed 
overhead, and a steady pounding of air and artillery strikes sounded throughout 
the day, leaving Maroun al-Ras shrouded in a brown-gray fog of smoke and dust.

On Israel's second front, the Gaza Strip, where the governing Hamas movement's 
military wing and two smaller armed groups continue holding an Israeli soldier 
captured in a June 25 raid on an army post just outside Gaza, at least six 
Palestinians died in Israeli artillery strikes near the town of Beit Lahiya. 
Palestinian hospital officials said the dead included a 50-year-old woman, her 
11-year-old grandson and a 4-year-old girl.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said 20 rockets were launched from Gaza in the last 
two days, including eight on Monday from the area that Israeli forces were 
targeting. In the incident that killed the girl, the spokeswoman said Israeli 
forces were not aiming at residential buildings "but one of our shells 
misfired, and it hit closer to the civilian population than it was aimed."

The military was also investigating the crash of an Apache Longbow helicopter 
in Israel's northern Galilee region that had been flying support operations for 
troops on the edge of Bint Jbeil. Israeli military officials said two crew 
members died in the crash.

While leaving open the possibility the helicopter could have been damaged by 
Hezbollah ground fire, Israeli military officials said it was more likely that 
a technical malfunction caused the crash, the second by a U.S.-made Apache here 
in the past week.

"This battle against Hezbollah is going to last," Avi Dichter, Israel's public 
security minister, told a small group of reporters in Jerusalem. "We're not in 
any hurry."

But Dichter also acknowledged that the military operation would likely make way 
for diplomacy in the coming days.

"The target is not to dismantle totally Hezbollah from its missiles capability 
-- that's not the mission," Dichter said. "But we know that we, Israel, by our 
means, and the guidelines we gave to the [military], can't drive Hezbollah from 
its means of warfare."

Lebanese medics spoke about a weekend incident that highlighted what they said 
was Israel's indiscriminant targeting in the south.

On Saturday, Israeli forces struck two ambulances outside the town of Qana, 
injuring six Red Cross volunteer medics as well as the three wounded passengers 
they were carrying, Red Cross medics said. The ambulances were flashing blue 
lights and had illuminated the Red Cross flag, the medics said.

"I fell down," said Qassem Shalaan, 28, one of the wounded medics, who was 
standing about three feet from the first ambulance when it was struck. "I 
opened my eyes to make sure I could still see, then I checked my body and I was 
okay."

He had three stitches below his lip and cuts on his leg. His eardrums were 
bruised.

As the medics in the other ambulance called for help, a second missile hit it 
less than a minute later, wounding the three other medics, they said.

The medics, all wearing flak jackets and helmets, kept working despite their 
injuries. They took the wounded -- a 14-year-old boy, his father and his 
grandmother -- into a nearby home. There, in the basement, they used their 
shirts as bandages amid shelling that lasted throughout their two-hour wait for 
help.

"I'll speak for myself, but I feel like I have no cover even as a Red Cross 
worker," Shalaan said from his hospital bed.

By evening, Sami Yazbak, head of the Red Cross in Tyre, said he had received an 
Israeli apology and an assurance they would not be attacked again. Shaalan 
returned to the Red Cross office, a small, six-room compound a short way from 
the Mediterranean coast. He had taken off his bandages before seeing his mother 
so as not to worry her.

Wilson reported from Jerusalem. Correspondents Anthony Shadid in Tyre, Edward 
Cody in Beirut, Jonathan Finer in Avivim and John Ward Anderson in Jerusalem 
contributed to this report.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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