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Bolton admits U.S. blocked Israel-Lebanon truce
The U.S. former ambassador to the the United Nations, John Bolton, admitted that Washington deliberately resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire during Israel’s conflict with the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah last summer.
The United States wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability before any truce can be implemented, Bolton told the BBC in a radio documentary, titled The Summer War in Lebanon, to be broadcast in April.
The former UN envoy also said an early ceasefire would have been "dangerous and misguided".
Washington decided to join efforts to end the fighting only when it was clear that Israel’s campaign to crush Hezbollah wasn’t working, he added.
The British government also refused to call for an immediate ceasefire during the month-long conflict, leading to the death of more than 1,200 mostly Lebanese civilians in Israel's vast bombardment of the country and land invasion.
The U.S.-UK resistance to join calls for an immediate ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy, correspondents say.
At the time, American officials claimed that a truce was insufficient and that an agreement was needed to address the balance of power in the region.
In the BBC interview, Bolton described the U.S.’s tactic as "perfectly legitimate... and good politics" for the Israelis to defeat their enemy militarily, especially because Hezbollah “attacked Israel first” and that the Jewish state was acting "in its own self-defense".
He also said he was "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire.
Bolton quit his job in December after failing to satisfy Senate opponents, who questioned his abrasive style at the UN, arguing that a man who once declared there was "no such thing" as the UN couldn’t be a suitable choice to join the international body.
Several other Western officials also told the BBC that there were Arab leaders who wanted Israel to destroy Hezbollah.
"There were many not - how should I put it - resistant to the thought that the Israelis should thoroughly defeat Hezbollah, who... increasingly by Arab states were seen as an Iranian proxy," said UN special envoy Terje Roed Larsen.
Israel launched a deadly assault on Hezbollah after the resistance group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid last July. A UN-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting in August, with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah declaring a strategic victory over Israel.
Israel’s failure to retrieve the two captured soldiers, crush Hezbollah and halt its daily cross-border rocket attacks led the Israelis to view the war as a failure.
Western media suggested last summer that the Israeli army had been preparing for a huge assault on Lebanon for years, and had shared its plans with the United States.
The reports were confirmed this month when Israeli premier Ehud Olmert said that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the capture of the Israeli soldiers.
Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of David Wurmser, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s adviser on the Middle East, recently told Israel’s leading newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, that the Bush administration stalled over imposing a ceasefire during Israel’s assault on Lebanon because it was expecting the war to be expanded to Syria.
“The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space. They believed that Israel should be allowed to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its [Iran's] strategic and important ally [Syria] should be hit," Wurmser said.
Putting all the pieces together, Israel had a plan, approved by the U.S., to launch war against Lebanon – followed by possible strikes against Syria – using the pretext of Hezbollah’s capture of the two soldiers. The real intention, analysts say, was to weaken what are seen by Israel and the U.S. to be Iran’s allies before attacking the Islamic Republic itself.
Source: Aljazeera
Bolton admits U.S. blocked Israel-Lebanon truce
The U.S. former ambassador to the the United Nations, John Bolton, admitted that Washington deliberately resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire during Israel’s conflict with the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah last summer.
The United States wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability before any truce can be implemented, Bolton told the BBC in a radio documentary, titled The Summer War in Lebanon, to be broadcast in April.
The former UN envoy also said an early ceasefire would have been "dangerous and misguided".
Washington decided to join efforts to end the fighting only when it was clear that Israel’s campaign to crush Hezbollah wasn’t working, he added.
The British government also refused to call for an immediate ceasefire during the month-long conflict, leading to the death of more than 1,200 mostly Lebanese civilians in Israel's vast bombardment of the country and land invasion.
The U.S.-UK resistance to join calls for an immediate ceasefire was one of the most controversial aspects of the diplomacy, correspondents say.
At the time, American officials claimed that a truce was insufficient and that an agreement was needed to address the balance of power in the region.
In the BBC interview, Bolton described the U.S.’s tactic as "perfectly legitimate... and good politics" for the Israelis to defeat their enemy militarily, especially because Hezbollah “attacked Israel first” and that the Jewish state was acting "in its own self-defense".
He also said he was "damned proud of what we did" to prevent an early ceasefire.
Bolton quit his job in December after failing to satisfy Senate opponents, who questioned his abrasive style at the UN, arguing that a man who once declared there was "no such thing" as the UN couldn’t be a suitable choice to join the international body.
Several other Western officials also told the BBC that there were Arab leaders who wanted Israel to destroy Hezbollah.
"There were many not - how should I put it - resistant to the thought that the Israelis should thoroughly defeat Hezbollah, who... increasingly by Arab states were seen as an Iranian proxy," said UN special envoy Terje Roed Larsen.
Israel launched a deadly assault on Hezbollah after the resistance group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid last July. A UN-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting in August, with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah declaring a strategic victory over Israel.
Israel’s failure to retrieve the two captured soldiers, crush Hezbollah and halt its daily cross-border rocket attacks led the Israelis to view the war as a failure.
Western media suggested last summer that the Israeli army had been preparing for a huge assault on Lebanon for years, and had shared its plans with the United States.
The reports were confirmed this month when Israeli premier Ehud Olmert said that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the capture of the Israeli soldiers.
Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of David Wurmser, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s adviser on the Middle East, recently told Israel’s leading newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, that the Bush administration stalled over imposing a ceasefire during Israel’s assault on Lebanon because it was expecting the war to be expanded to Syria.
“The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space. They believed that Israel should be allowed to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hezbollah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its [Iran's] strategic and important ally [Syria] should be hit," Wurmser said.
Putting all the pieces together, Israel had a plan, approved by the U.S., to launch war against Lebanon – followed by possible strikes against Syria – using the pretext of Hezbollah’s capture of the two soldiers. The real intention, analysts say, was to weaken what are seen by Israel and the U.S. to be Iran’s allies before attacking the Islamic Republic itself.
Source: Aljazeera