Sawt Falasteen - Lebanon, Israel to hold new talks in US as ceasefire nears end

The two countries last met on April 23 at the White House, where US President Donald Trump announced a three-week ceasefire extension and voiced optimism for a historic agreement.

Trump at the time made the bold prediction that within the latest ceasefire period, he would welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to Washington for a historic first summit between the countries.

The summit did not happen, with Aoun saying a security deal needed to be in place and Israeli attacks needed to end before such a landmark symbolic meeting.

The ceasefire had been extended through Sunday. Since it first went into effect on April 17, Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people, according to an AFP tally based on figures from Lebanese authorities.

Israel has vowed to keep pursuing attacks against Hezbollah, the Shia armed group and political movement backed by Iran's ruling clerics, despite the ceasefire.

Hezbollah began a campaign of firing into Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the US-Israeli war on February 28.

"Anyone who threatens the State of Israel will die because of his actions," Netanyahu said last week after an Israeli strike in the heart of Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah commander.

A Lebanese official told AFP that the country would seek "the consolidation of the ceasefire" during the talks in Washington.

"The first thing is to put an end to the death and destruction," the official told AFP on custom of anonymity.

Iran has demanded a lasting ceasefire in Lebanon before any agreement to end the wider war, as it frustrates Trump by refusing his appeals for an accord on his terms.

- Pressure on Hezbollah -

More than 2,800 people have died since Israel launched the strikes in early March, including at least 200 children, according to Lebanese authorities.

Hezbollah says that toll includes its fighters.

Israel has pounded areas of Lebanon with large Shia populations including Beirut's southern suburbs and has invaded the border region, seizing control in an area it occupied from its 1982 Lebanon war until withdrawing in 2000.

The United States has backed Lebanon's calls to maintain sovereignty over all its territory but also repeatedly pressed it to take action against Hezbollah.

The United States "recognizes that comprehensive peace is contingent on the full restoration of Lebanese state authority and the complete disarmament of Hezbollah," a State Department statement said.

"These talks aim to break decisively from the failed approach of the past two decades, which allowed terrorist groups to entrench and enrich themselves, undermine the authority of the Lebanese state, and endanger Israel's northern border," it said.

It will be the third round of talks between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations.

Unlike the last round, which Trump brought to the White House, or the first round, neither Secretary of State Marco Rubio nor Trump will participate as the president is on a state visit to China.

The US mediators for the two-day meeting at the State Department will include the ambassadors to Israel and Lebanon -- respectively Mike Huckabee, an evangelical pastor and staunch supporter of Israel's regional ambitions, and Michel Issa, a Lebanese-born businessman and golfing partner of Trump, as well as Mike Needham, a close aide to Rubio.

Lebanon is represented by special envoy Simon Karam, a veteran lawyer and diplomat who has fiercely defended Lebanon's sovereignty, as well as its ambassador in Washington.

Israel's team includes its ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter, a close Netanyahu ally who is close with the Israeli settler movement in the occupied West Bank.

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N.Shalabi--SF-PST