Lebanese Premier Seeking Changes to U.N. Proposal

"We are trying to put into the resolution terms over which there is already a consensus in Lebanon," Siniora said, referring to his seven-point plan approved by Christian and Muslim leaders and the cabinet, including Hezbollah's ministers.

Siniora insisted that the 75,000-member Lebanese army is up to the task of patrolling the border hills, since it has gradually been confiscating weapons from Palestinian groups and seizing al-Qaeda operatives in the country. It recently captured armed Palestinians who were about to launch rockets, he said.

The prime minister, a moderate Sunni Muslim and a longtime friend of Hariri, finds himself at the helm of the first Lebanese cabinet that has included Hezbollah ministers. The Shiite movement established itself after the 1978 and 1982 Israeli invasions to drive Israeli soldiers out of the country with resistance and guerrilla activity. After Lebanon's civil war ended in 1990, Hezbollah remained intact as the country's only armed militia, at Syria's insistence, so there would be a force to directly confront Israel's occupation in the south.

The Lebanese government had been approaching the issue of disarming Hezbollah through a "national dialogue." But those efforts were disrupted with the outbreak of hostilities on July 12 when Hezbollah carried out a raid into Israel, seizing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others.

Asked whether he had been in direct contact with Hezbollah officials or the movement's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, Siniora responded, "Not since July 12."

Siniora's government distanced itself from the Hezbollah raid, saying it had "no knowledge of it and disavowed it." But in speeches made since the death toll in Lebanon rose into the hundreds, Siniora has referred to Nasrallah in deferential terms, in an apparent effort not to alienate his massive following in Lebanon's Shiite community, and has saluted Hezbollah fighters for defending their land in the face of invading troops.

Handling such a crisis that was not of his making, Siniora conceded, is an "unpleasant experience."

"Yet we have to live together to preserve this unique experience of diversity," he said. "We are trying to lead inch by inch. We have more Lebanese authority now than we ever had, which makes me patient. Every day since I took over we have been gaining more ground for the Lebanese state. People have come out and said out loud what they did not dare whisper concerning the Syrians, the Palestinians and Hezbollah."

Reminded that the Lebanese state has not really controlled the country since civil war broke out in 1975, he argued: "Have you ever risen early to watch the sunrise? There is nothing called a direct shift from darkness to complete brightness. But I really think we are addressing all the right issues."