Saturday, June 15, 2002

Tensions on Lebanese Border Cast a Pall Over Peace Effort
For months, there has been intermittent shelling by Hezbollah and return fire from Israel. On a visit to the region in April, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell took time out to visit Lebanon and Syria to pressure leaders there to crack down on activity by Hezbollah for fear it could prompt a regional war.

American officials said that in the last 36 hours, diplomats in the region had renewed contacts with Lebanese and Syrian officials, urging restraint, especially given the administration's efforts to establish peace.

"Starting with the secretary's visit, we've been underscoring to all the parties the need for maximum restraint along the border area," one senior administration official said this evening. "We don't see much of a difference in patterns of activity. It remains a volatile situation, and the message is, `Everybody keep cool.' Israelis have expressed their concerns, but the broader reason is that this is the worst possible time of having something ignite up there."

…the State Department's top Middle East expert, Assistant Secretary William J. Burns, met with his counterparts from the United Nations, the European Union and Russia to discuss the administration's next steps.

Both American and European officials said the meeting produced strong consensus on the need to move forward simultaneously in efforts to re-establish security, address economic and human needs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to provide a path for settling the conflict.

One diplomat said that the idea of declaring a provisional Palestinian state whose borders and capital could be determined later was under serious consideration by Mr. Bush, but that he believed no decision had yet been made on that or a host of other points, and that there was some ambivalence about the idea from other nations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/international/middleeast/15DIPL.html

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