Beckett plays down hopes of breakthrough

The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, today played down hopes of an early breakthrough in solving the current Middle East crisis when foreign ministers from the region join their counterparts from America and the EU in Rome tomorrow.

Margaret Beckett told MPs that negotiations on the mandate and make-up of any international stabilisation force for southern Lebanon would be "difficult".

In the short term, she said all the international community could do was help ameliorate the deteriorating humanitarian conditions being suffered by Lebanese civilians.

In an echo of the US position, which supports Israel's right to self-defence, she also dismissed growing pressure from MPs for the government to call for an immediate ceasefire and take a harder line on Israel.

Pressure on the US and UK to back an international ceasefire call grew when the Saudi foreign minister Saud Al Faisal, standing next to Tony Blair, said the fighting had to stop and Israel had to respect Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

An ICM poll in The Guardian, which found that 61% of British voters felt Israel had overreacted to Hizbullah's actions and just 22% believed its response had been proportionate, added to the pressure.

However the Israeli defence minister, Amir Peretz, said today that Israel would establish a security zone in southern Lebanon and control it until an international force arrived.

Speaking before MPs left for their 76-day summer recess, Mrs Beckett acknowledged events were "a tragedy" for ordinary Lebanese people but said Hizbullah was "deliberately siting missiles in the heart of civilian populations".

She warned that any new international stabilisation force would "take time" to establish, although work to that end "continues intensively".

Her comments came as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, held talks with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in Jerusalem, and Israeli jets pounded targets in Beirut.

The foreign secretary flatly rejected a claim by Sir Peter Tapsell, a Tory MP, that the prime minister was "colluding" with US President George Bush in giving Israel the go-ahead to wage "unlimited war" - a war crime he alleged was "gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw".

Mrs Beckett hit back: "Since I reject the allegations that you have made, there is clearly nothing with which my right honourable friend would have been in collusion."

Reflecting the opinion of many on the Labour backbenches, Mohammad Sarwar, the MP for Glasgow Central, said that Hizbullah had "no respect" for human life, but condemned Israel's "disproportionate" response.

"They have targeted [the] entire Lebanese population and don't you think it's time for the British government to call upon the United States to call for immediate and unconditional ceasefire?" he asked.

Foreign minister Kim Howells, who took a stronger line than Mrs Beckett or Mr Blair about the need for Israeli "restraint" at the weekend, revealed to MPs today that he had told his Israeli counterpart that attacks against Lebanese bridges and infrastructure targets made "no sense".

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said Israel's demands, although "wholly legitimate", would be greatly strengthened by desisting from attacks on civil infrastructure and other areas of Lebanon.

He added: "On the international buffer force that has been proposed, given that British troops are not available and American troops perhaps not appropriate, and the French have said the idea is premature, are you confident there can be put in place a sufficiently capable and well-equipped force when necessary?"

Mrs Beckett warned: "The use of the words 'buffer force' is not something that is falling happily on people's ears in the area."

But she added: "You are certainly right to identify both that this will be time-consuming and not easy, and the whole issue of the mandate of such a force, and the nature and construction of such a force, is going to be a matter of difficult negotiation.

"I expect that will be very much a part of the discussions in Rome tomorrow. But that is why I believe that one of the strong efforts that we must make is to see what can be done now to ameliorate the situation."

In the short term this would probably be primarily through humanitarian means, she said.

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