ISRAEL: U.N. advisor Terje Larsen and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to meet in efforts to restore calm.

A U.N. team sent to the Middle East to seek a solution to the fighting between Israel and Hizbollah met with Israel's foreign minister Tuesday (July 18), but announced no breakthroughs in the conflict. "The UN delegation centred some specific and concrete ideas on how to resolve the current crisis and to reach an end of hostilities. I think both parties agreed that is necessary indeed to have a political framework to reach, eventually a cease fire," UN political adviser Taria Larsen said. He added that the team's efforts would continue working with Lebanese and Israeli leaders over the next few days. "We will continue our dialogue with both Lebanese and Israeli counterparts and I do expect that over the next few days we will continue our dialogue with our Israeli counterparts. We will now proceed after meeting the foreign minister to the prime minister's office to have the same dialogue there with our counterparts," Larsen said. For her part, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that Israel shared the objectives of enforcing UN resolutions which call for the disarming of Hizbollah.; "Israel and indeed the international community face a common threat from an axis of terror ahead: Hizbollah, Hamas, Syria, and Iran. Israel and the international community also share a common goal to end the control of Hizbollah over the lives of Lebanese and Israeli, and to bring an end to its attempt to threaten the peace and security in the region. Therefore, it is in our mutual interest to ensure the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1559. We discussed today ways to achieve these objectives. This must, of course, include the effective deployment of the Lebanese armed forces through the south in place of Hizbollah, and the disarming of Hizbollah as a militia," Livni said. Hizbollah's cross-border operation last week sparked an Israeli military offensive against Hizbollah targets and an array of civilian installations in Lebanon. Hizbollah responded by firing hundreds of rockets across northern Israel.

ITN Source | July 18, 2006

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