UNITED NATIONS, Aug 12: After weeks of inaction, the UN Security Council Friday night unanimously adopted a resolution that calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities followed by the deployment of Lebanese troops and a significantly expanded United Nations peacekeeping presence across southern Lebanon as well as the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the same area.

The 15-member Council, which was chided by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for procrastination, adopted the measure with 15-0 vote and also called for Hezbollah to stop all attacks immediately and for Israel to cease “all offensive military operations”.

Mr Annan told the 15-member body how “profoundly disappointed” he was that the Council took so long to agree to such a resolution. “All members of this Council must be aware that its inability to act sooner has badly shaken the world’s faith in its authority and integrity,” he said.

Lebanon’s acting foreign minister Tarek Mitri told the Council that while his country was eager to see a cessation of hostilities, the nature of the cessation should be the same for both sides. “The Lebanese are not confident in [an] Israeli distinction between ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’. The end to military operations should be unqualified,” he said, adding that the “obscenely disproportionate and unjustifiable Israeli retaliation” has already led to the deaths of more than 1,000 Lebanese.

Although Mr Mitri welcomed the Council’s acknowledgement of the Shebaa Farms issue, he said a durable political solution to the crises in the Middle East could not “be implemented as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab land in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and in the Syrian Golan Heights, and wages war on innocent people in Lebanon and Palestine”.

Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman said the resolution represented “an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past and to create a genuine new reality in our region”, citing the prohibition against the supply of weapons to armed groups in Lebanon and “a radically different international force with a mandate and capabilities … to create a new situation in Lebanon in which the borders will be secure”.

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed the resolution’s adoption but said: “Now, the hard and urgent work of implementation begins.”

She urged the governments of Israel and Lebanon to commit to ending large-scale violence, adding: “Hezbollah now faces a clear choice between war and peace, and the world should help to ensure that the choice is the right one.”

The most pressing challenge is to help thousands of displaced people, she said, pledging the support of the US in this effort.

“Finally, the Security Council of the United Nations is deciding to halt war in Lebanon and Israel,” said the minister of foreign affairs of France, Philippe Douste-Blazy.

He called on all countries to contribute to a reinforced UNIFIL, and said France, which is already part of the force, was examining the additional supplementary support that it might be able to provide.

RESOLUTION: Welcoming the Lebanese government’s plan to deploy 15,000 troops across the south of the country as Israel withdraws behind the Blue Line “at the earliest”, the Council backed the simultaneous deployment of a UN force with an enhanced mandate, equipment and scope of operation.