UN Lebanon resolution nears after French-US deal

The United States and France agreed yesterday on a Security Council resolution calling for fighting between Israel and Hizbollah to end, but on the ground both sides traded fire and a Hizbollah rocket killed three.

The 15 member UN Security Council was due to receive the text at 7 p.m. GMT to review it, the United Nations announced.

"This is a first step. There is still much to be done," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "But there is no reason why this resolution should not be adopted now and we have the cessation of hostilities... within the next couple of days."

Even if world powers agree on a UN resolution, getting the warring parties to stop fighting may not be easy.

Hizbollah leaders have sworn to fight as long as Israeli soldiers remain on Lebanese soil. At least 10,000 Israeli troops are inside Lebanon trying to dislodge Hizbollah fighters from the border and stop them firing rockets into Israel.

Hizbollah cabinet minister Mohammed Fneish said the guerrilla group would stop fighting when Israel ended its bombardment of Lebanon and withdrew its troops.

Hizbollah rocket attacks killed three people in northern Israel yesterday and wounded five, police and medics said.

Israel warned residents of Sidon to evacuate south Lebanon's biggest city ahead of planned air strikes on what it said were Hizbollah offices and rocket-launching sites located there.

An Israeli army spokesman said leaflets dropped on Sidon, whose normal population of 100,000 has been swollen by refugees from fighting further south, had warned all residents to leave.

A local official in Sidon said Hizbollah's Shi'ite guerrillas were not present in the mainly Sunni Muslim city.

Traffic was normal in the city and there were no signs large numbers of people were planning to leave.

Lebanon says a million people, a quarter of the population, have been displaced by the war launched after Hizbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

The conflict has killed at least 734 people in Lebanon and 78 Israelis. Hizbollah has fired 2,600 rockets into Israel.

A communique issued by French President Jacques Chirac's office in Paris said the draft calls for a "full cessation of hostilities" and a commitment to work "on a permanent ceasefire for a long-term solution".

But it does not give a time for a cessation of hostilities. France's draft resolution had called for an "immediate" end.

A second resolution is envisaged a week or two after the first is adopted, setting down conditions for a permanent ceasefire and authorising an international force.

Helicopter-borne Israeli naval commandos attacked Hizbollah guerrillas near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre overnight.

A senior naval officer, who declined to be identified, said eight commandos were wounded, two seriously, in the operation.