The Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, effectively acting as the negotiator for Hezbollah, rejected US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's peace proposals.
Nabih Beri, Lebanon's parliament speaker and Hezbollah's de facto negotiator, rejected proposals brought by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday, inisisting a cease-fire must precede any talks about resolving Hezbollah's presence in the south, an official close to the speaker said.
Rice's talks with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora also appeared to have been tense. Siniora told Rice that Israel's bombardment was taking his country "backwards 50 years" and called for a "swift cease-fire," the prime minister's office said.
An official close to Beri said his talks with Rice failed to "reach an agreement because Rice insisted on one full package to end the fighting."
The package included a cease-fire, simultaneous with the deployment of the Lebanese army and an international force in south Lebanon and the removal of Hezbollah weapons from a buffer zone extending 30 kilometers from the Israeli border, said the official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.
Beri rejected the package, proposing instead a two-phased plan. First would come a cease-fire and negotiations for a prisoner swap. Then an inter-Lebanese dialogue would work out a solution to the situation in south Lebanon, said the official.
The United States has insisted that no cease-fire can take place without dealing what it calls the root cause of the violence – Hezbollah's domination of the south along the Israeli border. Israel has rejected any halt in the fighting until two soldiers captured by the guerrillas are freed and the guerrillas are forced back.
The U.S. has said an international force might be necessary to help the Lebanese army move into the south. The central government has long refused to send the army in, insisting Hezbollah is a legitimate force and fearing that doing so would tear apart the country because of the guerrillas' strength.
In a sign of the differences between the U.S. and Lebanon, Siniora presented his own package for a permanent solution that contained long-standing Lebanese complaints that must be addressed before "Lebanese authority can be spread over all areas," his office said.
It included a call for a "swift cease-fire," to be followed an over-all solution guaranteeing the return of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, Israel's withdrawal from the Shaba Farms – a tiny border region that Lebanon claims – and a provision on minefields lain in south Lebanon during its 18-year occupation of the region.
This could take a while. Bringing in extraneous negotiating points is, of course, normal. Bringing up the Sheba Farms is a particularly odd point though. My understanding of that issue is that Israel took control of that reportedly rocky and barren area from Syria, not from Lebanon.
