BEIRUT: Lebanon\u2019s prime minister said US envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call Wednesday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before US elections are held on November 5.
\n\u201cThe call today with Hochstein suggested to me that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth\u201d of November, Najib Mikati said in a televised interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.
\nHochstein was heading to Israel on Wednesday to discuss conditions for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
\nHezbollah\u2019s new leader Naim Qassem on Wednesday said the group would agree to a ceasefire with Israel under acceptable terms, but added that a viable deal has yet to be presented.
\n\u201cWe are doing our best… to have a ceasefire within the coming hours or days,\u201d Mikati told Al-Jadeed, adding that he was \u201ccautiously optimistic.\u201d
\nMikati said Hezbollah is no longer linking a ceasefire in Lebanon to a truce in Gaza, however criticizing the group over the \u201clate\u201d reversal.
\nPreviously, Hezbollah had repeatedly declared that it would only stop its attacks on Israel if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza.
\nBut Qassem on Wednesday said the group would accept a ceasefire under conditions deemed \u201cappropriate and suitable,\u201d without any mention of the Palestinian territory.
\nMikati said a ceasefire would be linked to the implementation of a United Nations resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
\nUnited Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in southern Lebanon, while demanding the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.
\n\u201cThe Lebanese army is ready to strengthen its presence in southern Lebanon\u201d and ensure that the only weapons and military infrastructure in the area are those controlled by the state, Mikati said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIRUT: Lebanon\u2019s prime minister said US envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call Wednesday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before US elections are held on November 5. \u201cThe call today with Hochstein suggested to me that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":72316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72317,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72303\/revisions\/72317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}