Cease-fire ?

When Tony Blair came back from the United States and before he decided not to go on holiday for a few days he admitted that there was a split in the Cabinet on what should be the British policy on Lebanon.

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The split was, presumably, between those who supported the PM in his “Israel has the right to defend itself and there should be a cease-fire soon but there is very little we can do about it” and those who rather forcefully insisted that “Israel is a nasty aggressive state, though we think Hezbollah has gone a litttle too far but there should be an immediate and unconditional cease-fire though, frankly, we don’t exactly know what we can do about it”.

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So who was going to produce the cease-fire resolution? Well, the UN, of course. Well it has, produced a draft resolution, sponsored jointly by the United States and France, an odd combination.

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Speaking during a round of interviews, the Prime Minister insisted diplomats at the UN would "take account" of representations from the Arab League.

He added that three things were needed for the Lebanese Government to regain control of its territory without leaving room for the Hezbollah militia to operate in.

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"The first is that we need to take account obviously of any reasonable representations made about the existing UN resolution.

"The second thing however is to get it done and get it done without delay. We should not make the best the enemy of the good here. Let's get the resolution which will call for the cessation of hostilities.

"And then thirdly that will give us the space in which to deal with the long term solution, both for the Lebanon which is putting the Government of Lebanon back in charge of its country and also, 'cause I believe this very, very strongly, to return to the Israel Palestine question which I think is completely fundamental to the whole of the issues in the Middle East."

Mr Blair said he would do "all I can possibly do" in terms of negotiations while he was away on his summer break. How kind of him.

"I've put off going away for a couple of days because it was necessary to get everybody in the international community together and get a text (of the resolution) and we've done it now.'' said Blair today before leaving Downing Street to join his family for some ' quality time'.

OK well then all will be fine and dandy as they say accross the pond.

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In the meantime the Qana (Lebanon) pictures properganda issue contiues, this link is very interesting .