Returning to Old Approach, U.S. Faces Risky Path Ahead

European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, center, confers with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before the start of the 13th ASEAN Regional Forum at Kuala Lumpur Convention Center (KLCC) in Kuala Lumpur, Friday, July 28, 2006. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara) (Dita Alangkara - AP)

At the moment, the Shiite movement also has serious incentives not to cooperate -- or fully cooperate -- given many indications that its popularity is growing on streets throughout the Arab world, even in countries with Sunni Muslim majorities, in turn giving Shiites, the Islamic world's second sect, new prestige. Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, which is Sunni, have traditionally been rivals. A cell of the Sunni extremist movement tried to assassinate Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in April. But this week al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called for Muslims to rally to Lebanon's side.

Regionally, the Hezbollah conflict with Israel increasingly looks like a proxy war between Iran and the United States, according to European diplomats and U.S. analysts. The U.S.-designed package to end it is premised on excluding Iran and Syria, despite their historic interests, geographic proximity and deep political ties to Lebanon, not only with Hezbollah.

Iran converted to Shiite Islam in the 16th century -- in large part to establish a different identity from the neighboring Sunni Ottoman Empire -- with the help of Shiite clerics from what today is Lebanon. Ties between the two nations' clergy have been close ever since. And Lebanon was part of Syria until France pulled it apart to create a haven for Maronite Christians, a Catholic sect. For decades, until very recently, the Lebanese and Syrians considered themselves one people in two nations.

"Our approach has been hampered from the beginning by our failure to initiate direct, high-level contact with Syria, perhaps the one party that can bring some meaningful pressure to bear on Hezbollah, besides Iran," said Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia.

Ignoring Syria or Iran could be seriously counterproductive, undermining the long-term prospects for a deal, former diplomats and analysts said. Any sustainable solution will require getting the "necessary buy-in" from Tehran and Damascus to ensure Hezbollah participates, said Edward P. Djerejian, former ambassador to both Israel and Syria and now head of Rice University's Baker Institute. "What is essential for success is that all the parties need to be engaged either directly or indirectly."

Washington has no ties with Iran, and has strained relations with Syria. But the two countries could be brought in through "muscular" diplomacy that involves both carrots and sticks, as they were in the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War to liberate Kuwait and the subsequent Madrid peace conference, Djerejian said. Washington has resisted including either country even indirectly because it considers them part of the problem for creating, arming and abetting Hezbollah.

Armitage criticized his former colleagues as "a little lazy" for not talking with Syria. "I happen to feel we are, in large measure, in the right," he said. "But we have to be able to sit and listen to the Syrians in this case and see if they have the desire, the courage and the wisdom to get involved in a positive way. We get a little lazy, I think, when we spend all our time as diplomats talking to our friends and not our enemies."

Militarily, a new international force will be highly exposed and almost certainly controversial among some Lebanese long weary from the parade of foreign armies in the poor south -- Palestinian guerrillas for over a decade, then Israeli troops for 18 years. The last multinational force in Lebanon, led by the United States and including French, Italian and British troops, also went in as peacekeepers after Israeli's 1982 invasion but ended up becoming ensnared in Lebanon's civil war -- and becoming targets of Hezbollah suicide bombers. They departed abruptly in 1984, their mission incomplete.

The international force currently under discussion would not be formally charged with disarming Hezbollah, Rice said, but instead with helping the Lebanese army oversee Hezbollah's disarmament over time. The force would have at least an indirect role in the process -- and might well be perceived by many Lebanese as being dispatched to help defang Lebanon's last private army, said U.S. analysts and European diplomats.

"I think it's going to be a slippery slope," said Danielle Pletka, a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "There's no multinational force that can disarm Hezbollah. Once you go down that road you make compromises, and compromises will be that whatever happens, Hezbollah is not disarmed."

"It's a risky approach," Pletka said. "It's doing something to do something for the appearance of doing something."

Staff writer Peter Baker in Washington contributed to this report.