• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

French foreign minister in Lebanon calls for cease-fire

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Beirut, July 31, IRNA
Lebanon-France-Solidarity
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called Monday for a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon.

"A cease-fire is a priority for France," he told reporters in Beirut after meeting with his Lebanese counterpart Fawzi Salloukh.

Douste-Blazy said he was on a "solidarity visit."
Israeli aggressions on Lebanon since July 12 killed hundreds of people, mostly civilians.

"I urge all parties to show the courage and responsibility needed for putting an end to the fighting," he said.

Israeli jets targeted a three-story building in the southern town of Qana killing 56 people, most of them women and children still asleep at the time.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Monday called Israeli temporary suspension of airstrikes "a first step, but an insufficient step, given the current stakes."
Villepin, speaking outside Paris, repeated French calls for an immediate cease-fire, calling such a halt to fighting a "necessary condition to alleviate the intolerable suffering of citizens." The U.N. Security Council called Sunday for an end to the violence in Lebanon and expressed "extreme shock and distress" at Israel's Qana airstrike.

Many council members called for an immediate cease-fire and an end to violence and an urgent long-term solution to the fighting between Israel and Lebanon.

Douste-Blazy said France "would have preferred a stronger statement" that calls for an immediate cease-fire.

Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud also criticized the Security Council.

France, which has historic ties to Lebanon, has taken an active role in the effort to broker an end to the latest fighting in the Middle East.

Over the weekend, it circulated a draft U.N. resolution among Security Council members that would call for an immediate halt to fighting.

Salloukh, at a joint press conference with Douste-Blazy, said Lebanon considered the Security Council statement "insufficient" but thanked France for its efforts.

Douste-Blazy said the Qana attack made finding a political solution to the crisis more urgent than ever.

"Public opinion in the Middle East is becoming more radicalized," he said.

"If we do not have a discussion with all the parties as soon as possible, we run the risk of a conflict that would go beyond the region and which would pit the Muslim world against the West. It would be tragic."
1416/2322/1416