Air attacks

Israeli warplanes carried out raids on suspected Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley east of Beirut on Thursday.

One policeman and two civilians died in the Bekaa, police said.

Warplanes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station, fired more than 400 missiles overnight at Khiam in the south, and destroyed several roads.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, had called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" at the Rome talks, but Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, argued that Hezbollah needed to be disarmed first.

Abul Gheit acknowledged that despite the setback, the conference had been "a step forward in the direction of a ceasefire".

Israel, however, saw it differently.

Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister, told army radio on Thursday: "We received yesterday in the Rome conference permission, in effect, from the world - part of it gritting its teeth and part of it granting its blessing - to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah's presence is erased in Lebanon and it is disarmed."

Ramon also said that "everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah, we have called on all who are there to leave. Bint Jbeil is not a civilian location, we have to treat it like a military zone".

The minister was speaking before a security cabinet meeting on Thursday that was to decide whether to expand the offensive, now in its 16th day.

Israeli media said the cabinet wants "to step up air strikes and limit ground operations".

Israelis growing weary

But any decision to expand the campaign might give fuel to an increasing number of Israelis criticising their government.

Nine Israeli soldiers were killed and 22 wounded in bloody battles in the south Lebanon stronghold of Bint Jbeil on Wednesday alone, and the army has been unable to stop the rocket barrages on northern Israel that have killed 18 civilians in 15 days.

After Hezbollah fighters crossed the border on July 12, killing three soldiers and capturing two others, there was strong support for the government's decision to launch a large-scale offensive to crush the resistance group.

But that consensus is beginning to crack, and critics are starting to say the government launched the offensive hastily, with no exit strategy, and many fear the country is again entering a quagmire across its northern border.

"The war is leading us by the nose to sink deeper in the Lebanese mud. The Hezbollah wants to drag us into its territory. The moment the army will be in Lebanon for an extended period, it will be hell for us in there," said Ran Cohen, a dovish lawmaker and a colonel in the Israeli army reserves.

Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, tried to quell the criticism on Wednesday, warning of tougher times ahead and asking lawmakers to hold their tongues until the fighting ended.

But Danny Yatom, a retired general and Labour Party legislator, said the initial goals of the Israeli operation were too grandiose, and the government now realised that wiping out Hezbollah was no longer realistic.

A poll conducted before the announcement of the nine deaths on Wednesday showed that public support for pressing the offensive had begun to slip slightly, with 82% n favour, compared to 90% the previous week.

Fifty-one Israelis have been killed since July 12, including 33 soldiers and 18 civilians.

More than 405 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in Lebanon.

Expressing her country's deep concern over the humanitarian situation in Lebanon, Rice said that she was ready to go back to the Middle East "at any time that I think we can move towards a sustainable ceasefire that can end the violence."

Rice, who arrived here Thursday afternoon for her first official visit to Malaysia, said the key to resolving the Israel-Lebanon conflict is extension of the Lebanese authorities throughout the country, the ability for the Lebanese government tocontrol all forces, all arms within the country.

She told a press conference at the end of the ASEAN-led Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) here Thursday that reigning in the forces and arms in Lebanon as well as having a United Nations-mandated international troops in the country formed a basis for seeking an end to the crisis.

Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been battling the Israeli army for the past two weeks. And the bloody fightings have claimed about 400 lives on both sides so far.

The U.S. government is working urgently to try to make it possible to get aid supplies to reach the people in Lebanon, she said.

Earlier, Rice and her counterparts from the 10-member regional grouping witnessed the signing of the Framework Document for the Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership, a framework aimed at boosting political, economic and security ties.

Rice is also scheduled to attend the 13th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on Friday and discuss common security concerns in the region with other ARF participants.

The ARF meeting is intended to intensify ASEAN's external dialogue in political and security matters as a means of building cooperative ties with states in the Asia-Pacific region.

Friday's meeting will bring together the 10 ASEAN members with representatives of Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, East Timor and the United States.

The United States is a dialogue partner of ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Rice flew in from Rome with two fellow diplomats, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Canadian Foreign Minister Peter McKay.

Prior to her visit to Malaysia, Rice has traveled to the Middle East and to Rome on July 26 to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The release of the diplomats' prepared statement was delayed by almost two hours by wrangling over its contents. The key sticking point was the phrase concerning a ceasefire, according to two European diplomats who were in the room.

Most of the officials in the room were seeking, at the very least, a phrase that said the group would "work towards an immediate ceasefire," one of the diplomats said. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused, and won, he said.

"She insisted it say 'work immediately to bring a ceasefire,' not 'work to bring an immediate ceasefire,'" the diplomat said. He said that the group argued about that for more than 30 minutes before ceding the point to the United States.

The change reflects the Bush administration's view that the conflict will not be settled in a lasting way unless Israel is given the leeway to diminish Hezbollah's military capabilities.

"This is a region that has had too many broken cease-fires," Ms. Rice said at the conference's conclusion.

Hanging over the discussion was the killing of four members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon on Tuesday by Israeli artillery. On Tuesday night, Israel called the incident a mistake but United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said it was "apparently" deliberate.

Asked about the incident today, Mr. Annan said that while he accepted the apology of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he wanted a separate U.N. investigation into the incident.

"Mr. Olmert definitely believes it was a mistake," Mr. Annan said. But, he added, "the shelling of the U.N. positions began early in the morning, and carried on all day" despite repeated calls to the Israelis from the United Nations that the posit, which Mr. Annan said was "long established and clearly marked" was being shelled.

"You can imagine the anguish of the" U.N. peackeepers over the death of their colleagues, said a clearly angry Mr. Annan.

The observers were from Austria, Canada, Finland and China. In Beijing today, officials said that President Hu Jintao had condemned the killings and demanded an investigation and an immediate cease-fire, Reuters reported.

The conference here did not reach a decision on the makeup of an international force that would be sent to occupy southern Lebanon once a ceasefire package is reached, but did agree that the force would fall under U.N. auspices, and not NATO. European envoys said that France and Germany both balked at the idea of using NATO forces because of its commitments elsewhere.

Ms. Rice said that the prime purpose of the force will be to support the Lebanese government in disarming Hezbollah, a position that Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said he supported.

While agreement was reached on the need for the international force and a follow-up conference on aid for repairing the damage done to Lebanon, perhaps the most stark aspects of the meeting were how isolated the United States appears, and the growing impatience, particularly in the Arab world, over the delay in calling for a ceasefire. While France and other European countries have delayed calling for an immediate ceasefire, in support of the U.S. position, some daylight is now starting to show between Europe and America.

A senior U.S. official denied that America stood alone on the issue, saying that "there was broad agreement in the room over the urgent need for a ceasefire."

In Washington, White House Tony Snow rejected a suggestion that the United States had blocked a desire by the other nations at the conference to push for cease-fire.

"If the talks broke down, they wouldn't have come out with a joint statement that showed they are knitted up on the key items," he said, The Associated Press reported.

During the closed door session, diplomats said, Mr. Siniora gave a heartrending speech which left many in the room calling for immediate action.

"Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?" Mr. Siniora asked. "Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"

Mr. Siniora said Lebanese will begin "legal proceedings" against Israel, and appeared to accuse Israel of war crimes. He said he would "spare no avenue to make Israel compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted on us."

He ended his remarks with a quote from the Roman historian Tacitus, which he said describes well what Israel is doing to Lebanon and the region today.

"They created a desolation and call it peace," Mr. Siniora said.

Diplomats said there was visible emotion around the room after Mr. Siniora's comments.

During her remarks after the conference, Ms. Rice acknowledged Mr. Siniora's "very impassioned" speech, saying he had "put a human face" on the crisis.

While still pressing for an immediate halt to the fighting, Mr. Siniora in his remarks after the conference seemed to accept the prospect of negotiations over the conflict's end. He said that as part of any negotiations, he would press several conditions first put forward by Hezbollah: that Israel withdraw from a disputed slice of border territory it continues to occupy, that it release Lebanese prisoners, and that it turn over a map showing the locations of land mines it placed in southern Lebanon.

Ms. Rice called on Syia and Iran to do more to rein in Hezbollah, and said that Mr. Annan had pledged to use his "good offices" to reach out to Damascus and Tehran. The United States has no diplomatic ties with Iran and limited representation in Syria.

She singled out Syria in particular as needing to take action to end the crisis.

After she spoke, the senior administration said that the crux of the matter for the United States is making sure that any ceasefire will last, and that Hezbollah won't emerge after all still able to rain rockets down on Israel.

Exasperated, he said: "What's a ceasefire?"

A reporter answered: "People stopping killing each other."

"We're for people stopping killing each other," the official said. "but how do we do that? Do we do it by walking into a room and saying, 'everybody stop?' That's what happened before. What's going to make them stop?"

Helene Cooper reported for this article from Rome and John O'Neil from New York. Contributing reporting were: Greg Myre from Jerusalem, Jad Mouawad from Beirut, and Elaine Sciolino from Paris.

"Now more than ever, we call for moderation, with the goal of a cessation of hostilities that are provoking enormous damage and a humanitarian tragedy," said Massimo D'Alema, foreign minister of Italy, which today will hold a meeting of Western and Arab leaders in an attempt to broker a resolution to the crisis.

Britain has continued to back President Bush's call for a "sustainable," if not immediate, cease-fire, and supported Israel's right to guarantee security on its borders.

France, which initially called for an immediate cease-fire and condemned Israel's campaign as "totally disproportionate," in recent days has eased closer to the U.S. position, blaming Syria and Iran >for inciting Hezbollah.

But Italy and Spain have pointedly criticized the United States' failure to halt the bloodletting.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose Socialist government has had testy relations with Washington since coming to power a little more than a year ago, has also been critical of "abusive" force in the region, alluding to Israel.

"The silences of today in light of what is happening in the Mideast could become the regrets of tomorrow, because waiting for time to pass costs human lives," Zapatero said.

Germany, while recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, warned that Lebanon could be "further destabilized" under a prolonged bombing campaign.

Perhaps more worrisome for Washington, two of its strongest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - which had generally sided with the U.S. as the conflict began - on >Tuesday voiced strong misgivings over the severity of the Israeli airstrikes and echoed European calls for a speedy end to the crisis.

In an apparent reference to Rice's description of the turbulent "birth pangs" of a "new Middle East," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that "what is happening in the region is destructive chaos, not creative chaos."

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah went further, warning that "no one can predict what will happen if things get out of control" in Lebanon. If peace options fail, he said, "there will be no other option but war."

A Saudi government advisor said that "America is doing a disservice to everyone by not reining in the Israelis."

Washington's closest Arab allies are entrenched, undemocratic regimes whose leaders support the Bush administration's stance on Lebanon in part because >they fear that the popular Islamic activism embodied by Hezbollah and Hamas could turn against them at home. Those governments now worry that the popular perception that the United States is standing behind Israel will undermine their credibility at home and invite new militancy.

"Yes, there is a new Middle East - in the worst sense, not in the sense the Americans would like it," said Nawaf Obaid, an analyst in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and an adjunct fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

New rifts, Obaid said, may result in "a Shia world headed up by Iran vs. a Sunni world headed up by Saudi Arabia - and this is exactly what no one needs."

France, which headed European opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, now looks to be almost allied with the U.S. over the conflict in Lebanon.

President Jacques Chirac had expressed >great concern about the destruction wrought by the Israeli bombardment and called for an immediate cease-fire. But he recently tempered that criticism of Israel with rebukes of Hezbollah that have hardened over time, narrowing the distance between French and U.S. viewpoints.

This week, Chirac referred to "initiatives taken by Hamas and Hezbollah which could not have been taken alone." This was, the French newspaper Liberation suggested, "an almost explicit allusion to Damascus and Tehran."

Many European countries now find themselves forced into a balancing act, not wanting to offend the U.S. or Israel, but mindful of public opinion that has tended to favor the underdog in Lebanon, said Italian analyst Furio Colombo, a former newspaper editor and a senator for the ruling Democratic Left party.

As a result, he predicted, the Europeans probably will not be able to act >with the determination necessary to find a solution, at least in the short term, such as during today's meeting in Rome.

"The results will be mild, watered down ... very European," he said.

Murphy reported from London and Rotella from Paris. Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Rome and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin contributed to this report.

Israel has voiced support for a NATO role in such a force, a key agenda item at an international conference in Rome Wednesday on the Mideast crisis - and NATO's secretary general refused to rule out that option.

"I do not include or exclude anything, but at the moment
I will not speculate about any NATO role," de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels, when asked about a possible involvement by the 26-nation alliance.

Referring to the Rome conference of foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said: "Many suggestions are on the table including people, ministers...who talk about a NATO role."

But he said: "This is not the moment and that has nothing to do with being unenthusiastic," adding: "I see many suggestions ending with a question mark.

"I take the position that I hope the Rome conference will yield some results ...and begin to draw a common line."

On Sunday Israel said it was ready to back an international force led by NATO in south Lebanon to ease tensions.

"Israel supports the possibility of deploying a multi-national force with a strong mandate," possibly sponsored by NATO, Israeli Defence Minster Amir Peretz was quoted as saying in Jerusalem.

Chirac meanwhile, in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde, proposed that international peacekeepers could be sent to secure Lebanon's borders with Israel and Syria without NATO involvement.

The mission of the international force "would be to control the ceasefire and assure the respect of the borders, both the Israeli-Lebanese border and Syrian-Lebanese border of course," he said.

Sending troops is contingent on "a political agreement that assumes a ceasefire."

The agreement "must be negotiated partly by the Lebanese government and Hezbollah and partly between the international community, the Lebanese government and Israel," he said.

"He was taking pictures of Israeli installations along the northern border," said Nancy Goldfarb, spokeswoman for the Israeli Consulate General in Philadelphia to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "He was arrested on suspicion that his pictures were taken for intelligence purposes. Currently, he is still under investigation and I don't know whether he will be indicted."

An Israeli court extended Falah's detention through Sunday and an appeal is scheduled for Thursday in Haifa, according to his lawyer in Israel, Husein abu-Husein.

Falah's son, Naail, told CBC News that the family's daily calls to Foreign Affairs have been ignored.

"I've seen more effort done by the American government than I have from the Canadian government, and we are not American citizens," he said.

Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador to Canada, said he first heard about the case this week.

"I was approached by some members of Parliament yesterday, and I passed their request on to Jerusalem, and as soon as I get an answer I will be in a position to reply," Baker said on Wednesday.

A renowned Middle East geographer, Falah often takes pictures of landmarks for his work, according to his son.

"If he is detained on the basis of his academics, it's a sad situation for Israel, because academic freedom should be respected all around the world," Naail Falah said.

He said that his father considers himself pro-Palestinian and has written articles critical of Israeli policies in the past, but is not a security threat.

Abu-Husein said he was only able to visit his client for the first time on Wednesday.

Russia has called for a ceasefire in Lebanon and criticized the Israeli attacks, saying they went beyond the anti-Hizbollah military operation the Jewish state said it was conducting.

Russia is one of six powers that want Iran to respond to an offer of incentives in exchange for Tehran stopping uranium enrichment. Unlike the United States and some other Western powers, it says it is too early to talk about economic or other sanctions against Tehran.

The telephone exchange took place at Ahmadinejad's request.

Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday during a visit to Tajikistan that the conflict between Lebanon and Israel could sweep through the entire Middle East like a hurricane.

The United States and key European countries fear Iran's nuclear activity is a cover for bomb making. Tehran says it has a right to civilian nuclear power and that its nuclear program is aimed only at producing electricity.

"You have the connections with the Lebanese nation," Malka Goldwasser, the soldier's mother, said.

France has criticized Israel's offensive on its former colony Lebanon, unleashed after the soldiers' capture, but it has also called on Hizbollah to release the two men immediately.

Members of the Goldwasser family and the family of Eldad Regev, who was taken in the same incident, are due to meet French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and an official from President Jacques Chirac's office on Thursday.

The father of Gilad Shalit, who was taken in a separate incident by Hamas militants and who has French citizenship, may also be present, according to officials from the Jewish group Siona, which helped organize the families' visit to France.

"We have the feeling that here in France, we will be able to get support that we cannot get in Israel," Avni said. "We need to know if they are OK, if they are healthy and if anyone can help us to bring them back home because the army cannot do it."

Malka Goldwasser and the other families did not question the actions of the Israeli government and placed the blame for the 15-day-old crisis squarely with Hizbollah which has unleashed a stream of rocket attacks on northern Israel.

"We want to underline that those who are holding Eldad and Udi (Goldwasser's nickname) and Gilad Shalit as well have no respect for accepted conventions," said Eyal Regev, brother of Eldad Regev, speaking in Hebrew through a French interpreter.

"We have had no information on the condition of the soldiers or the state they're in, and that's why we're asking the French government and the international community to help us."

Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.

In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN's pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.

Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that.

In Bint Jbeil, meanwhile, another bloodbath was taking place. Claiming to "control" this southern Lebanese town, the Israelis chose to walk into a Hizbollah trap. The moment they reached the deserted marketplace, they were ambushed from three sides, their soldiers falling to the ground under sustained rifle fire. The remaining Israeli troops - surrounded by the "terrorists" they were supposed to liquidate - desperately appealed for help, but an Israeli Merkava tank and other vehicles sent to help them were also attacked and set on fire. Up to 17 Israeli soldiers may have died so far in this disastrous operation. During their occupation of Lebanon in 1983 more than 50 Israeli soldiers were killed in just one suicide attack.

The battle for southern Lebanon is on an epic scale but, from the heights above Khiam, the Israelis appear to be in deep trouble. Their F-16s turn in the high bright sun - small, silver fish whose whispers gain in volume as they dive - and their bombs burst over the old prison, where the Hizbollah are still holding out; beyond the frontier, I can see livid fires burning across the Israeli hillsides and the Jewish settlement of Metullah billowing smoke.

It was not meant to be like this, 15 days into Israel's assault on Lebanon. The Katyushas still streak in pairs out of southern Lebanon, clearly visible to the naked eye, white contrails that thump into Israeli's hillsides and border towns.

So is it frustration or revenge that keeps Israel's bombs falling on the innocent? In the early hours two days ago, a tremendous explosion woke me up, rattling the windows and shaking the trees outside, and a single flash suffused the western sky over Nabatiyeh.

The lives of an entire family of seven had just been extinguished.

And how come - since this now obsesses the humanitarian organisations working in Lebanon - that the Israelis bombed two ambulances in Qana, killing two of the three wounded inside. All the crews were injured - one with a piece of shrapnel in his neck - but what worried the Lebanese Red Cross was that the Israeli missiles had pierced the very centre of the red cross painted on the roof of each vehicle. Did the pious use the cross as their aiming point?

The bombardment of Khiam has set off its own brush fires on the hillsides below Qlaya, whose Maronite Christian inhabitants now stand on the high road above like spectators at a 19th century battle. Khiam is - or was - a pretty village of cut-stone doorways and tracery windows, but Israel's target, apart from the obviously marked UN position whose inhabitants they massacred, is the notorious prison in which - before its retreat from Lebanon in 2000 - hundreds of Hizbollah members and, in some cases, their families, were held and tortured with electricity by Israel's proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army.

This was the same prison complex - turned into a "museum of torture" by the Hizbollah after the Israeli retreat - that was visited by the late Edward Said shortly before his death. More important, however, is that many of the Hizbollah men originally held prisoner here were captives in cells deep underground the old French mandate fort. These same men are now fighting the Israelis, almost certainly sheltering from their fire in the same underground cells in which they languished, perhaps even storing some of their missiles there.

In Marjayoun, next to Qlaya, once the SLA's headquarters, Lebanese troops are trying to prevent Hizbollah guerrillas using the streets of the Greek Catholic town to fire yet more missiles at Israel. Seven-man Lebanese army patrols are moving through the darkened roads of both towns at night in case the Hizbollah brings yet more Israeli bombs down on our heads.

In Beirut, one observes the folly of Western nations with amusement as well as horror, but, sitting in these hill villages and listening to how the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, plans to reshape Lebanon is clearly a lesson in human self-delusion. According to US correspondents accompanying Ms Rice on her visit to the Middle East, she is proposing the intervention of a Nato-led force along the Lebanese-Israeli border for between 60 and 90 days to assure that a ceasefire exists, the deployment of an enlarged Nato force throughout Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah and then the retraining of the Lebanese army before its own deployment to the border.

This plan - which, like all American proposals on Lebanon, is exactly the same as Israel's demands - carries the same depth of conceit as that of the Israeli consul general in New York, who said last week that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing".

Does Ms Rice think the Hizbollah want to be disarmed? By Nato? Wasn't there a Nato force in Beirut which fled Lebanon after a group close to the Hizbollah bombed the US Marine base at Beirut airport in 1983, killing 241 US servicemen and dozens more French troops a few seconds later? Does anyone believe that Shia Muslim forces will not do the same again to any Nato "intervention" force? The Americans are talking about Egyptian and Turkish troops in southern Lebanon; Sunni Muslims ruling Shia territory.

The Hizbollah has been waiting and training and dreaming of this new war for years, however ruthless we may regard the actions. They are not going to surrender the territory they liberated from the Israeli army in an 18-year guerrilla war, least of all to Nato at Israel's bidding.

Yesterday's assault on the Israeli army in Bint Jbeil proved that. The problem is that the US sees this slaughterhouse as an "opportunity" rather than a tragedy, a chance to humble Hizbollah supporters in Tehran and help to shape the "new Middle East" of which Ms Rice spoke so blithely this week.

It is Israel which is running out of time in southern Lebanon. Its attacks have for the fifth time in 30 years placed it in the dock for war crimes in Lebanon. The toll of Lebanon's civilian casualties has reached 400. And still the US will not intervene to prevent the carnage, even to call for a 24-hour ceasefire to allow the 3,000 civilians still trapped between Qlaya and Bint Jbeil - who include a number of foreign nationals - to flee.

The only civilian walking those frightening roads to Qlaya was a goatherd, guiding his animals around the huge bomb craters in the tarmac. Talking to him, it emerged that he was almost stone deaf and obviously could not hear the bombs. In this, it seemed, he has a lot in common with Condoleezza Rice.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited