Rice flies to Beirut as Lebanon battles rage

BEIRUT - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Beirut yesterday to seek a "sustainable" cease-fire in Lebanon, where Hizbollah guerrillas were battling Israeli forces in the south.

Hizbollah said it had shot down an Israeli helicopter and hit five tanks, inflicting casualties in fierce battles that erupted after Israeli forces pushed north from a border village.

Arab television channels said two Israeli soldiers had been killed. The Israeli army said only that nine had been wounded. An Israeli military source acknowledged that a helicopter had crashed, but said Hizbollah did not shoot it down.

Rice arrived by helicopter from Cyprus and Lebanese political sources said she would meet Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Shi'ite Muslim Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

Berri, head of the Shi'ite Amal movement, is a pro-Syrian politician allied to Hizbollah who has acted as a link between the Islamist group's leaders and Siniora since the war erupted.

Israeli tanks had driven north from the border village of Maroun al-Ras, captured in heavy fighting last week, towards the town of Bint Jbeil, about four km inside Lebanon.

The incursion was one of several forays by Israeli troops across the border in search of elusive Hizbollah fighters using well-hidden rocket-launchers to attack northern Israel.

Israeli warplanes battered southern towns and villages, killing at least three people and wounding 20. An air strike also hit a Shi'ite district of Beirut just after midday.

Israel's 13-day-old onslaught, launched after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12, has killed 372 people and wrecked many civilian installations in Lebanon, but has not stopped rocket attacks that have killed 17 Israelis. Twenty Israeli soldiers have also been killed.

Civilian casualties on both sides and a growing humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, where half a million people have fled their homes, have fuelled international pressure for a cease-fire.

Israeli security sources and Western diplomats said Israel's army believed it had about a week to complete its campaign before an international deal is reached to stop the fighting.

Cease-fire deal

The United States, which blames Hizbollah and its allies in Syria and Iran for the crisis, wants any cease-fire deal to remove the threat to Israel posed by the Shi'ite group.

"We believe that a cease-fire is urgent," Rice told reporters during her flight to the Middle East. "It is important to have conditions that will make it also sustainable."

Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who wants to swap the two soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians in Israeli jails, said Israel's assaults would not stop cross-border rocket fire.

"I assure you that this goal will not be achieved," he told Lebanon's As-Safir daily.

Israel, after initially dismissing the idea, now says it would be willing for an international force to dislodge Hizbollah from south Lebanon and take control of Lebanon's border with Syria to stop the guerrillas re-arming.

"It doesn't matter who runs the mission, it's just important that the mission is accomplished. The Lebanese army, the United Nations, NATO, as long as the Lebanese border is cleared of Hizbollah missile-launching pads," Israeli Vice-Premier Shimon Peres told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper.

But just as Hizbollah has fought Israeli attempts to drive it from the south, it would surely resist military coercion by any international force, assuming one could be assembled.

Siniora has said only a broad political deal will work.

This should include a prisoner swap and an Israeli pullout from the disputed Shebaa Farms area to create conditions in which Hizbollah could disarm and the Lebanese army take over.

Any new international force would have to deploy under a UN flag, he told CNN at the weekend.

UN peacekeepers have been in the south since Israel invaded in 1978 to attack Palestinian guerrillas, but they have failed to restore Lebanese state authority there.

Rice is also set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas before discussing the crisis with European and Arab officials in Rome on Wednesday.

Israel's Lebanon offensive coincided with an Israeli military push into the Gaza Strip to try to recover a soldier captured by Palestinian militants on June 25.

An Israeli shell landed near a crowd of people in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least two people, Palestinian witnesses said. An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was checking the report.

- REUTERS