Bush sends Rice back to Middle East for new talks

Condoleezza Rice

BEIRUT - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will return to the Middle East tomorrow to discuss a United Nations resolution to end the 17-day-old war between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

President George W Bush told a Washington news conference today, after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that an international force should be sent quickly to southern Lebanon to secure shipments of humanitarian aid.

Blair said a UN resolution was needed as soon as possible to end hostilities.

The two leaders met in Washington after a day that saw Israeli forces kill at least 14 people in Lebanon and Hizbollah launch new, longer-range missiles at Israel.

Rice had said she would return to the Middle East only when the time was right for a lasting solution to end the crisis.

The war, which has caused at least 459 mostly civilian deaths in Lebanon, and 51 in Israel, erupted after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a border raid on July 12.

Israel, with support from Washington, wants the Shi'ite group to be driven from the border and disarmed.

Rice was in Kuala Lumpur after visiting Lebanon and Israel earlier in the week and attending a conference in Rome that stopped short of calling for the violence to end immediately. Bush said she would return to the Middle East tomorrow.

"Her instructions are to work with Israel and Lebanon to come up with an acceptable UN Security Council resolution that we can table next week," he said.

US officials said there was still a lot of work to do to get the two sides to sign on to conditions for a ceasefire.

Issues on the table include the release of the two captured Israeli soldiers as part of a prisoner exchange, the creation of an international force on the border between southern Lebanon and Israel, and the disarming of Hizbollah.

Today, aircraft repeatedly bombed villages near Lebanon's southern port of Tyre and Israeli artillery fired hundreds of rounds across the border, killing 10 people including a Jordanian.

Four people were killed in about 70 air strikes in the eastern Bekaa Valley, Lebanese security sources said. An Israeli military source said three Hizbollah guerrillas were killed in fighting in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

Hizbollah fired scores of rockets into Israel, including two that the guerrilla group said were new, longer-range missiles, in a barrage that wounded at least six people, police said.

The longer-range rockets landed in open ground near the town of Afula, about 50 km from the Lebanese border. It matched the furthest that Hizbollah rockets had landed inside Israel since the conflict began.

Hizbollah said it had fired new "Khaibar 1" missiles at Afula, fulfilling a pledge by its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to extend its bombardment of Israel beyond the port of Haifa.

Israeli media reported that a Hizbollah rocket hit a clinic in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya but caused no injuries.

An Israeli shell exploded near an aid convoy in south Lebanon, wounding at least three people, witnesses said.

The convoy, organised by Lebanese civil defence workers, was evacuating stranded civilians from Rmeish village to Tyre. Hundreds of Shi'ites had taken refuge in the Christian village, where some were reduced to drinking irrigation water.

"We are with the resistance," Fatmeh Srour told Reuters. "But we need supplies to remain steadfast. My three-month-old baby hasn't eaten for two days because there's no baby milk."

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon, the existing UN peacekeeping force in the south, said it had withdrawn eight unarmed military observers from two posts on the border.

One of its observer posts was destroyed on Wednesday in an Israeli air strike that killed its four occupants. A second post was vacated earlier after an observer was wounded by Hizbollah gunfire in the border village of Maroun al-Ras.

Israel intensified its bombing a day after deciding to step up air raids and ground forays rather than launch an invasion.

Fierce fighting and the destruction of roads in the south have created terrifying conditions for civilians, and a UN official said the lack of clean water posed a fresh threat.

- REUTERS