BEIRUT, July 24: Lebanon’s parliament speaker, who doubles as Hezbollah’s de facto negotiator, rejected proposals brought by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday, insisting a ceasefire must precede any talks about resolving Hezbollah’s presence in the south, an official close to the speaker said.

Ms Rice’s talks with Prime Minister Fuad Siniora also appeared to have been tense. Mr Siniora told Ms Rice that Israel’s bombardment was taking his country ‘backwards 50 years’ and also called for a ‘swift ceasefire’, the prime minister’s office said.

An official close to parliament speaker Nabih Berri said his talks with Ms Rice failed to ‘reach an agreement because Rice insisted on one full package to end the fighting’.

The package included a cease-fire, simultaneous with the deployment of the Lebanese army and an international force in south Lebanon and the removal of Hezbollah weapons from a buffer zone extending 30kms from the Israeli border, said the official.

Mr Berri rejected the package, proposing instead a two-phased plan. First would come a cease-fire and negotiations for a prisoner swap. Then an inter-Lebanese dialogue would work out a solution to the situation in south Lebanon, said the official. The United States has insisted that no cease-fire can take place without dealing what it calls the root cause of the violence _ Hezbollah’s domination of the south along the Israeli border. Israel has rejected any halt in the fighting until two soldiers captured by the guerrillas are freed and the guerrillas are forced back.

In a sign of the differences between the United States and Lebanon, Siniora presented his own package for a permanent solution that contained long-standing Lebanese complaints that must be addressed before ‘Lebanese authority can be spread over all areas’, his office said.

It included a call for a “swift cease-fire.” Then would come an over-all solution guaranteeing the return of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, Israel’s withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms _ a tiny border region that Lebanon claims _ and the provision of minefields lain in south Lebanon during its 18-year occupation of the region.

ANNAN: Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday he would press for a truce in the Middle East crisis as well as the deployment of an international force in south Lebanon at a Rome ministerial meeting this week.

“What is important is that we leave Rome with a concrete strategy as to how we are going to deal with this, and we do not walk away empty-handed and once again dash the hopes of those who are caught in this conflict,” the UN chief said.

The secretary-general, accompanied by Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, left late on Monday for this week’s conference.

Mr Annan said that both a cease-fire and how such a force would be organized were on the agenda in Rome.—AP/Reuters