US: US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice begins a visit to the Middle East tomorrow, promising to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict in Lebanon but rejecting calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Dr Rice announced her long-awaited trip to the region as the United Nations Security Council ended two days of discussions on the escalating crisis in Lebanon that saw the US and Britain isolated in their opposition to a ceasefire.
Dr Rice said a ceasefire would represent a "false promise" unless it addressed the root causes of the conflict, which she blamed on Hizbullah's attacks on Israel and the capture of Israeli soldiers.
"This is a different Middle East. It's a new Middle East. It's hard. We're going through a very violent time. What we're seeing here ... are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and 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," she said.
Dr Rice is expected to meet Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and to attend a conference on Lebanon in Rome. She defended her refusal to talk to Syria or Hizbullah, saying they both knew what they had to do. She also defended her delay in travelling to the region.
"I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do," she said.
Earlier, US ambassador John Bolton told the UN Security Council that Washington is "studying" the insertion of an international stabilisation force on the Lebanese border as part of efforts to implement Security Council resolution 1559, which called for all foreign troops to leave Lebanon and the dismantling of armed militia.
Britain and the US called for the Security Council to express its intention "to create the conditions for a permanent solution and to bring about an immediate end to hostilities" and called on all sides to exercise restraint and to allow humanitarian access.
France received wide support at the UN for its call for a "humanitarian truce" to alleviate the suffering of civilians as soon as possible.
Vijay Nambiar, the leader of the UN mediation team in the Middle East, said that Israel had told his team that its action in Lebanon "was not, as in the past, a response to a particular incident - the abduction of the two soldiers - but was a definitive response to an unacceptable strategic threat by Hizbullah, and a message to Iran and Syria that threats by proxies would not longer be tolerated".
Israel has not ruled out accepting an international stabilisation force in southern Lebanon, but it first wants to destroy Hizbullah's command and control centres and weapons stockpiles.
Wednesday's conference in Rome will include the US, France, Russia, Britain, the European Union, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Nations and the World Bank . Germany, Spain and Jordan have also been invited and officials from Lebanon and other Arab states are expected to attend.