Rice wants ceasefire that helps forge 'new Middle East' Sheldon Alberts, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, July 22, 2006 Article tools
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday rejected international calls for an early ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah extremists, saying a quick end to the fighting would only give Lebanese and Israeli civilians the "false promise" of a lasting peace.
Rice will embark Sunday to the Middle East on an emergency diplomatic mission to open talks aimed at bringing a "sustainable end" to the violence.
She will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before heading to Italy for negotiations with the Lebanon "core group," which includes representatives from Egypt, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, Russia and the Lebanese government.
The U.S. is "beginning to see the outlines of a political framework" that would require Hezbollah to disarm and include eventual deployment of a "robust" international force to the Lebanese-Israeli border, Rice said.
"We do seek an end to the current violence, and we seek it urgently," she said.
But Rice stressed the U.S. Bush administration is not interested in "quick fixes" and said the world is witnessing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" in the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
"A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo, allowing terrorists to launch attacks at the time and terms of their choosing," Rice told reporters at a U.S. State Department news conference.
"I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante E Whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one."
Rice's remarks came amid fresh criticism from U.S. liberals, who accuse the Bush administration of mishandling the crisis.
Senator Edward Kennedy called the administration's refusal to seek an immediate halt to the fighting "a disaster" that could lead to further escalation of the violence.
"We have effectively abdicated our position in that part of the world," Kennedy told Bloomberg television. "Unless the United States is involved and engaged in using its good offices, and trying to find the forces on all sides to advance the cause of peace, we're going to continue to see cycles of violence."
The U.S. reluctance to seek a speedy ceasefire, however, stems from President George W. Bush's view that Israel's fight against Hezbollah is part of the broader war on terror in the Middle East, and his belief in the need for a democratic transformation in the region.
The White House maintains that disarming Hezbollah in southern Lebanon will allow the nascent, democratically elected Lebanese government to emerge as a stable and peaceful neighbour of Israel.
"Those extremists want to strangle (the Lebanese government) in its crib E much as the extremists want to strangle other new democratic governments in the region," Rice said.
"We are going through a very violent time," she added, but "people need to stand strong now. The time has come, not to just take a temporary solution that is going to fall apart."
Administration critics, though, say the explosion of violence between Hezbollah and Israel is evidence that U.S. policy in the Middle East is backfiring.
The White House strongly supported free elections in the region, only to see voters embrace Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and reward Hezbollah with enough political power in Beirut to thwart efforts to rein in its fighters.
"The Bush administration decided to make Lebanon one of the test cases of transformation and promotion of democracy," said Martin Indyk, a senior fellow in Middle East studies at the Brookings Institution. "The Lebanese got freedom, but they paid in terms of stability."
At a symposium on Israeli-Hezbollah crisis this week, Indyk said Lebanon's inability to control Hezbollah mirrors the problems facing Iraq's democratically elected government.
Over the past two months, more than 6,000 Iraqi civilians have died in rampant sectarian violence.
A reassessment of U.S. policy favouring transformation of the Middle East through regime change and democratization is "long overdue, but it is not happening," Indyk said.
Tony Snow, Bush's press secretary, on Friday dismissed critics who claim the U.S. support for democracy had fostered greater instability in the Middle East.
"The president never said this would be easy," Snow said in a televised interview.
"He said it's going to take time. Everybody who wants this kind of egg-timer diplomacy, who thinks, `Okay, these things ought to happen quickly' -- you don't understand human nature E Many times (terrorists) are going to fight to the death. We hope that is not the case in Lebanon."