Cease-Fire Efforts Stepped Up

Diplomatic efforts to end the Mideast bloodletting moved to the fore Monday, with Israel for the first time signaling willingness to accept a cease-fire based on a pullback of Hezbollah guerrillas from the volatile Lebanese frontier and the release of two captured soldiers.

Britain and the United Nations called for deployment of a peacekeeping force, a proposal Israel said would not stop Hezbollah attacks but would hamper the Jewish state’s ability to strike back.

Even Iran and Syria, Hezbollah’s primary supporters, appeared to join those searching for a way out of the raging 6-day-old battle between Israeli forces and the Shiite Muslim group that has left Lebanon’s infrastructure in ruins and terrorized Israelis living under a hail of rocket fire.

The Tehran government called for a cease-fire, followed by a prisoner exchange, and Syria also promised to aid mediation efforts.

More than 200 Lebanese, almost all civilians, have died, along with 24 Israelis, half of them soldiers, since the fighting flared Wednesday. Monday’s salvos included dozens of Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli communities, including the port city of Haifa, and Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 48 people across Lebanon.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese and foreign residents have fled to Syria and elsewhere, while U.S. officials began preparations for the first large-scale evacuation of American citizens today.

Adding impetus to efforts to resolve the crisis, the Bush administration announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would travel to the region in coming days, though without specifying a date.

Israel’s apparent softening of its stance on truce terms, which included dropping a demand that Hezbollah be disarmed and dismantled, was conveyed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to his Italian counterpart, Romano Prodi, senior aides to Olmert said. But Israel is insisting that the guerrillas pull back about 20 miles from the frontier.

Israel was cool to the idea of an international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to bolster what has been a small and largely ineffectual United Nations contingent that Israel says has done little or nothing to challenge Hezbollah’s control of the border zone. And there was widespread skepticism in Lebanon that Hezbollah, or Party of God, would agree to Israel’s cease-fire conditions.

The Shiite militia has insisted that it will only consider direct negotiations with the Jewish state, and that it will only release the Israeli soldiers in exchange for Lebanese and other Arab prisoners being held by Israel.

Moreover, few Lebanese believe that Hezbollah would ever abandon the Israeli border unless the guerrillas were forced out militarily.

Israel and the Bush administration continued to lay full blame for the confrontation on Hezbollah and its patrons -- with President Bush, in an unscripted declaration caught by an open microphone, using a pungent epithet to convey his conviction that Syria must be induced to rein in the Shiite Muslim militia.

Speaking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a luncheon at the Group of 8 summit outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Bush asserted that “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over.”

It was Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who proposed the deployment of an international peacekeeping force along the Lebanese frontier -- a measure Israel characterized as premature.

“I don’t think we’re at that stage yet,” said Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin. “We’re at the stage where we want to be sure that Hezbollah is not deployed at our northern border.”

The Bush administration echoed Israel’s reservations that peacekeepers would be insufficient to prevent Hezbollah from continuing attacks, yet would hobble Israel in responding militarily to any provocations by the guerrilla group.

Olmert, in a speech to Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, insisted that Israel would press ahead with its military campaign until the two captured Israeli soldiers were freed, rocket fire against northern Israel ended and the Lebanese army secured the frontier.

“Israel will not be held hostage by terror groups, a terror authority or by any sovereign country,” the Israeli leader declared.

Lebanon has suffered mightily under Israeli airstrikes, which continued to pummel the country Monday. Fewer midday explosions were heard in Beirut than on previous days, but Israel continued to hammer roads and highway bridges, as well as Hezbollah offices and residential buildings.

Israeli warplanes struck a bridge that links the southern port city of Sidon with Beirut, killing at least 10 people who were traveling in civilian vehicles, according to Lebanese media reports.

Local news reports said nine more bodies were found in the rubble of a rescue headquarters bombed over the weekend in Tyre, bringing the death toll in that blast to 25.

A Hezbollah-funded school and homes of Hezbollah officials were struck in the Bekaa Valley, according to media reports. Beirut’s port and southern suburbs continued to be pounded from the sky, and Israel’s army said it targeted rocket launching sites in southern Lebanon.

With the country languishing under total blockade, Beirut was beginning to suffer shortages of some supplies. Attacks on power plants and fuel storage tanks have left the electrical grid feeble and flickering.

In an interview with Reuters news service Monday, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called Israel “a terrorist country that is committing every day a terrorist act.”

“What Israel has been trying to do is take the country 50 years backward,” he said.

The United Nations complained that bombing remained so relentless in the south that the flow of humanitarian aid had been stanched. Residents in the south said there was no bread, water or electricity, and that the roads were impassable.

“Heavy exchanges continue -- they’re firing rockets on this side and shelling from the other,” said Milos Strugar, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. “People are stranded in their villages.”

Hezbollah also kept up its attack, aiming dozens of rockets at Israeli towns and cities, penetrating deeper into northern Israel than before.

One barrage peeled the facade off a vacant three-story building in Haifa, the scene of Hezbollah’s most lethal rocket attack a day earlier, which killed eight people; the city’s busy commercial port was closed by the rocket fire. A barrage of rockets struck a synagogue in the northern town of Safat, injuring five people, and another rocket fell close to a hospital there.

In the deepest strike into Israel yet, Israeli officials said, Hezbollah fired rockets that landed in the town of Atlit, about 27 miles south of the frontier and five miles south of Haifa. No one was hurt, but the strike accentuated fears of Hezbollah’s use of long-range rockets, supplied by Iran, capable of hitting Tel Aviv, 75 miles from the border.

Israeli authorities on Monday extended a state of emergency in northern Israel, which has been hit by about 800 rockets since the fighting erupted.

The Israeli military campaign in Lebanon has been overwhelmingly weighted toward airstrikes, but ground troops, mainly elite commando units, have been a sporadic presence inside southern Lebanon since the start of the campaign. An army spokesman said Israeli troops made a “very small incursion” overnight to dismantle Hezbollah positions, returning to Israel before dawn. No casualties were reported.

Foreigners and Lebanese alike are fleeing the warfare in burgeoning numbers. Syrian authorities reported that more than 100,000 people had crossed into Syria from Lebanon, forced to make the mountainous trek on back roads after Israel bombed the main Beirut-Damascus highway.

A commercial cruise ship was to begin ferrying out U.S. citizens today, under escort by a guided-missile destroyer.

The ferocity of the fighting, which surged over the weekend, spurred efforts to find some mediated solution. In Beirut for meetings with Lebanese officials, Annan’s special political advisor said he was prepared to give Israel “concrete ideas” to broker a cease-fire.

“We have made some promising efforts on the way forward,” Vijay Nambiar told reporters, but quickly warned that “much diplomatic work” remained.

Talk of a cease-fire also came from an unexpected quarter: Iran, which the United States and Israel accuse of being the guiding hand behind Hezbollah.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in Damascus for consultations with Syrian President Bashar Assad, opened the door to prospects of a cease-fire, which he said could be followed by an exchange of prisoners between Israelis and Muslim militants.

“A cease-fire could be pronounced which would be followed by an exchange,” Mottaki said, referring to “dozens” of Lebanese prisoners and an estimated 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The two nations, Hezbollah’s primary backers, did not specify truce terms but said they would continue to work to mediate the crisis, while at the same time “condemning the Israeli aggression, and expressing solidarity and total support for the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance,” according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.

“We need to reflect in a reasonable and just manner so that we can put an end to the crisis,” Mottaki said.

The Iranian official accused Israel of deliberately provoking the crisis.

“Extensive attacks on Gaza Strip, detention of Palestinian ministers and members of parliament, destruction of residential areas and farmlands, taking the lives of innocent people including women and children ... and smashing its economic infrastructures, bridges

Meanwhile, Iran lodged a letter with the United Nations Security Council bitterly contesting claims of Israel and the U.S. that Iran is behind Hezbollah’s current assault, and railing against what it called Israel’s “unbridled atrocities” in the Gaza Strip.

Clashes in Gaza continued, but on a far smaller scale than in Lebanon. Palestinians on Monday angrily protested the early-morning bombardment of the Hamas-run Foreign Ministry, which was hit for the second time since the Israeli offensive began June 28. Several other ministries have been hit as well.

The Gaza fighting, too, was sparked by the abduction of a soldier, 19-year-old tank gunner Gilad Shalit, during a cross-border raid June 25. Many Israeli strategists believe the deployment of thousands of Israeli troops in and around Gaza may have emboldened Hezbollah to carry out the raid that resulted in the seizure of two more soldiers on the Lebanese frontier.

King reported from Jerusalem and Stack from Beirut. Times staff writers Kim Murphy in Damascus, Paul Richter in Washington and James Gerstenzang in Strelna, Russia contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

No letup in attacks

Hezbollah’s rockets struck deeper into Israel, and Western nations continued evacuating their citizens from Lebanon on the sixth day of Israeli airstrikes. Recent developments:

Israel

Katyusha rockets strike Atlit in the farthest Hezbollah missile strike. At least three rocket barrages land in Haifa, wounding at least three people and closing its port. A rocket explodes near a hospital in Safat, injuring five people.

Lebanon

Israeli jets kill two people and start a large fire in Beirut’s harbor. At least 10 people die in the bombing of a bridge between Beirut and Sidon. In the Bekaa Valley, homes of Hezbollah officials and a Hezbollah-funded school are bombed. A gas storage tank in northern Beirut is set afire by Israeli warplanes.

Also on Monday

A fuel storage tank is bombed at Beirut’s airport, which has been closed since its runways were blasted Thursday by Israeli jets. An Israeli missile apparently misses its Hezbollah target and kills two people at a private home in southern Lebanon. Nine additional bodies are found at a rescue headquarters in Tyre that was bombed Sunday, bringing the death toll to 25.

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Sources: Times reporting, the Associated Press, Reuters, ESRI, GlobeXplorer (2001)