Rice returns to Middle East for new talks

By Lin Noueihed

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
will return to the Middle East on Saturday 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
on Friday, 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 U.N. 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 on Saturday.

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

U.S. 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.

INTENSIVE BOMBING

On Friday, 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 (30 miles) 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, organized by Lebanese civil defense 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.”

MOVING TO SAFETY

The U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, the existing U.N.
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 Tuesday 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 U.N.
official said the lack of clean water posed a fresh threat.

Aid workers said it was impossible to get medical supplies
and food safely to isolated villages because of Israeli
bombing.

“In effect there is no real humanitarian access in the
south,” said Christopher Stokes of Medecins Sans Frontieres.