U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to visit
the Middle East as early as next week to seek to calm the violence, said State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Thursday, but the "itinerary, timing and
all the stops" remained undecided.
Rice would like to go to the Middle East region and
seek to establish a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, said a report by the New
York Times on Wednesday.
But she was waiting at least a few more days before
wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah
forces, it said.
Earlier on the sidelines of the G8 summit in St.
Petersburg, Russia, U.S. President George W. Bush's remarks, overheard by the
audience, displayed the U.S. stance toward the Israel-Lebanon conflict.
Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that
Hezbollah must "stop doing this shit" -- carrying out the attacks on Israel --
for the violence to end.
And the Bush administration has repeatedly said that
a temporary cease-fire would give Hezbollah the time to regroup and mount more
fierce attacks against Israel.
On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted
410-8 to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas.
With Washington as its ally, Israeli officials said
that Israel must consider the potential threat posed by Hezbollah militia, who
had control of the southern parts of Lebanon, and its offensive must go on.
Warning his Jewish ally against civilian casualties,
the Bush administration is apparently trying to cushion international pressure
for as long as possible.
Washington had a tremendous interest in trying to
bring the fighting to an end as soon as possible, Scott Lasensky, an analyst
from the United States Institute of Peace, told media.
But, he added, the longer the fighting went on, the
worse the position of the moderates all over the region was.
The Israeli offensive against Lebanon continued into
its tenth day on Friday, with a total of more than 300 casualties, most of them
Lebanese civilians, increasing the risk of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel is maintaining its pressure in a bid to punish
the Hezbollah militants for rocket attacks on targets inside Israel and for the
abduction of two Israeli soldiers last week. Enditem
