Arab leaders are rejecting the US-French draft UN Security Council resolution that would bring a "full cessation of hostilities" but enable Israeli forces to stay in southern Lebanon until deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

The UN is expected to vote on the draft within days, and the US is pressing for a second resolution to establish the international force that would patrol a buffer zone between Lebanon and Israel.

But while the US hails the plan as a necessary first step, initial reaction in Lebanon Sunday was one of disappointment about a deal that few here see as an acceptable path to peace.

"What was agreed is not in Lebanon's interests but against them. This will open the door to never-ending war," said Nabih Berri, the Lebanese parliament speaker and veteran Shiite leader who is the interlocutor with Hizbullah. "There will be operations against this army that is not on its own soil, that is occupying here.

"Their resolution will either drop Lebanon into internal strife or will be impossible to implement," said Mr. Berri.

Israeli airstrikes continued pounding Hizbullah targets for the 26th straight day, killing 11 soldiers and raising the death toll to at least 748. Hizbullah guerrillas also fired more rockets into northern Israel, killing at least 12 soldiers in one attack, and taking the Israeli toll to at least 90.

As night fell Sunday, six explosions rocked Beirut's southern suburbs and a volley of six Hizbullah rockets landed on the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing at least three people and wounding more than 40.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the resolution was a first step toward "ending large scale violence," that is to be followed by a second resolution that she says will shape a "sustainable peace."

"It's a good basis for beginning to flow the authority of the Lebanese government into the south so this can't happen again," said Ms. Rice, speaking at President Bush's ranch at Crawford, Texas.

But the result of weeks of diplomatic negotiations – during which the US has given Israel a tacit green light to pursue its destructive asymmetrical military bombardment of Lebanon, and against Hizbullah – remains far from the Beirut government's own seven-point peace plan.

Besides an immediate cease-fire, complete Israeli withdrawal, and a UN stabilization force, Lebanon's plan calls for a return home of up to 900,000 displaced Lebanese mostly from the south, a prisoner swap, and a return to Lebanon of the disputed Shebaa Farms.

But both plans depend on one crucial ingredient for long-term success: Deployment of the long-weak Lebanese Army to the southern border, for the first time in decades. Underscoring its importance, US officials last week approved plans to train and equip the army.

So how prepared is a force of some 25,000, that has so far not engaged in the Hizbullah-Israel fight, but lost more than at least 34 officers and soldiers to Israeli strikes?

Early Saturday, a Lebanese Army soldier engaged Israeli commandos that landed for a raid in the southern city of Tyre. The soldier and his armored vehicle were destroyed; six more soldiers died Sunday.

"If we have a UN cease-fire, the army is the perfect tool to play the role ... If Hizbullah is disarmed," says a Lebanese general who once held broad intelligence responsibilities, and who asked not to be named. "But if Hizbullah is not disarmed, the army is not capable."

The Lebanese peace plan of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora includes Hizbullah disarmament, though all here recognize that the militarily efficient Hizbullah – which has so far confounded Israeli officials and commanders with the quality of its frontline resistance, in the face of overwhelming Israeli firepower – can't be disarmed by force.

The army reflects Lebanon's own sectarian mosaic and ethnic balance, with roughly one-third each of Shiite, Sunni, and Christian troops. But analysts say the Shiites are close to Hizbullah, and that any enforced effort to disarm the Shiite militia – the last to keep its weapons after Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war – could cause the army to disintegrate.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3