UN Security Council Unanimously Agrees Lebanon Peace Resolution

The UN Security Council has unanimously agreed to a resolution which calls for an end to the Middle East conflict in Lebanon and Israel, late on Friday night.

|TOP|Officials from Israel have stated that they would respect the plan, but said it would not call off a full-scale land invasion, launched on Friday, before Sunday at the earliest.

The US and France have been taking part in extensive emergency negotiations to strike a deal which now demands a “full cessation of hostilities”.

The resolution has also authorised the deployment of up to 15,000 United Nations peacekeepers in south Lebanon to support the Lebanese armed forces, and to take over control of the area as Israel withdraws.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had called on US President George Bush to give his full agreement, and will ask his Cabinet to approve the plan on Sunday, foreign ministry spokesperson Gideon Meir said. However, until this time, there will be no halt to a major Israeli ground offensive launched on Friday.

|AD|"The logic would be that even in the framework of this successful outcome, if you hand over to the Lebanese army in south Lebanon where you have Hezbollah removed from the territory, that makes [Lebanon's] troubles a lot easier," another foreign ministry spokesperson said.

The deal in New York was struck quickly after Olmert shocked the UN by ordering a major ground offensive and rejecting the draft text as unacceptable, before quickly making a U-turn on this decision.

Lebanon has made no immediate public response to the UN plans.

Diplomats have suggested that there might be a 10-day space between a halt to hostilities and UN troops beginning to replace Israeli forces.

The language used in the resolution is very compromising, and the resolution stops short of explicitly authorising UN troops to use force, and denies Israel its demand for a completely new multinational force.

"You never get a deal like this with everybody getting everything that they want," said Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary.

In New York, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said that the international troops would be empowered "to create security in the south and to secure the arms embargo (against Hezbollah)”.

In a concession by the Lebanese there is no demand for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel to be freed. The resolution emphasises the importance of freeing the Israeli troops held by Hezbollah, but does not formally demand it.