WASHINGTON, Aug 2: The United States and France have significantly narrowed their differences over how to achieve a ceasefire in Lebanon and could present a draft resolution to the UN Security Council by early next week, a senior US official said on Wednesday.
“I would say that our point of view and the French point of view are really converging, to the point now where we are working off a single text of a draft resolution,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
“We agree on all the major elements. It’s now a question of how those elements fit together and how you memorialise, encapsulate those elements in texts of UN resolutions,” he said.
McCormack said Washington hoped to reach an agreement and submit the resolution at the UN within days, either this week or early next week.
There were no immediate plans for a meeting of foreign ministers from the five Security Council permanent members — the Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — on the matter, he added.
Ambassadors from the five nations were holding intensive talks on the crisis in New York on Wednesday, while senior US officials in Washington were also in constant touch with their counterparts in other capitals in a bid to thrash out a deal, officials said.
France holds a key role in the negotiations because it is expected to provide the bulk of an international military force to be deployed in southern Lebanon as part of a deal to end three weeks of deadly fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Islamic militia Hezbollah.
The French, backed by fellow members of the European Union, have been pressing for an immediate cessation of fighting followed by a permanent ceasefire and a political deal that will involve disarming Hezbollah.
Only then would an international military force be deployed to help the Lebanese army gain control over southern Lebanon.—AFP
