US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday that a ceasefire 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 Vice Premier Shimon Peres who
had said the Israeli military campaign would take “A matter of weeks, not months.”
Israeli forces made clear that their goal was to inflict as much damage on Hizbullah
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 early on Wednesday at end of 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 Hizbullah 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 ceasefire,” she said.
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