Rice says cease-fire in Lebanon possible in days

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that a cease-fire could be reached in Lebanon within days.

"This week is entirely possible. Certainly we are talking about days not weeks," she said on the PBS Newshour.

Rice spoke after meeting with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres who had said the Israeli military campaign would take "a matter of weeks, not months."

But officials in the Jewish state said the 23-day-old war could run for at least another week.

In Jerusalem, Israeli forces made clear that their goal was to inflict as much damage on Hizbollah as quickly as possible before diplomatic efforts succeeded in ending the fighting.

Israeli officials had hoped for another 14 days of fighting, and Israel said it will resume full air strikes in Lebanon today at the end of a partial, 48-hour suspension.

To get the fighting stopped, Rice urged Lebanon to deploy troops to the south of the country, and to reassert itself over the region which Hizbollah is using to attack Israel.

"When we've got those conditions in place or when we know that a resolution is in fact going to support those conditions, I think we should move for a cease-fire," she said.

Israeli airborne commandos battled guerrillas near a Hizbollah-run hospital in eastern Lebanon today. Lebanese security sources said Israeli soldiers had landed by helicopter near the Hizbollah stronghold of Baalbek in the eastern Bekaa valley as aircraft launched several strikes in the region. An Israeli army spokesman declined to comment.

Three weeks after the war erupted when Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, Israel's security cabinet agreed to step up its offensive, and carry out a ground sweep 6-7 km into Lebanon, a political source said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he saw movement towards a ceasefire now that Hizbollah had suffered what he said were heavy losses.

"We are at the beginning of a political process that in the end will bring a ceasefire under entirely different conditions than before," he said.

Israel says it will not stop fighting until an international force is in place in southern Lebanon. Israeli leaders believe they have at least another week to damage Hizbollah before major powers finalise terms for a ceasefire and stabilisation force.

"It's the beginning of the end," a senior government official said of the offensive. "But the diplomatic process is like the revolutions of a locomotive engine, first it is slow and then it gathers momentum. We've just left the station."

Baalbek battle

Despite growing international calls for an end to fighting that has killed at least 624 people in Lebanon and 54 Israelis, Israel was set to resume full air strikes in Lebanon at the end of a partial, 48-hour suspension.

Lebanese security sources said the target of the Israeli troops dropped near Baalbek was al-Hikmah hospital. One source said senior Hizbollah official Mohammad Yazbik had visited the hospital earlier in the day but left before the attack.

There was fierce fighting with assault rifles, grenade-launchers and machineguns around the hospital, witnesses said. Israeli helicopters fired rockets and heavy machinegun fire at targets near the hospital and other targets in the city.

A Hizbollah source said several Israeli soldiers were trapped in the hospital. There was no independent confirmation.

Hizbollah fighters killed three Israeli soldiers and wounded 30 in fierce fighting on several fronts in south Lebanon on Tuesday as Israel.

"We have so far now about six efforts running inside Lebanon ... brigade-size or even bigger than brigade-size efforts in each one of them," Israeli Brigadier General Shuki Shahur said. An Israeli brigade usually has at least 1,000 soldiers.

- REUTERS