No False Promises

Full text of Secretary Rice's remarks as the prelude to her trip today to the Middle East. Here is the key passage:

A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo, allowing terrorists to launch attacks at the time and terms of their choosing and to threaten innocent people, Arab and Israeli, throughout the region. That would be a guarantee of future violence. Instead we must be more effective and more ambitious than that. We must work urgently to create the conditions for stability and lasting peace.

I have just come from New York where I met with Kofi Annan and received an assessment from the UN team that has just returned from the Middle East. The G-8 statement of July 16 and the UN Security Council Resolutions 425, 1559 and 1680 represent an international consensus that guides our diplomatic efforts to help Lebanon's young democracy make progress along three tracks: political, economic and security. The broad framework includes, of course, the deployment of the Lebanese armed forces to all parts of country and full international support for the efforts of the Lebanese Government to exhort its sovereign authority over all of its territory.

Latest story here, via Drudge.

Monday morning update: Michael Barone, RCP:

The guiding impulse of most leaders in Europe and of many in the United States is to seek some sort of negotiated compromise. That is what Bill Clinton did when Hezbollah attacked Israel 10 years ago, and he sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to negotiate with President Hafez Assad of Syria. But today, even the Europeans recognize that this approach is not only futile, but dangerous. Syria is a cat's-paw of Iran, and Iran, with its missiles and possible warheads, is an existential threat not only to others in the Middle East, but to Europe. Appeasement is possible when the attacker stands ready to be appeased, as Sadat and King Hussein were. It is dangerous where there is no such willingness, as seems to be the case for Iran's mullahs and its batty, Holocaust-denying president.

So let Israel take out as much of Hezbollah as it can, and then a, hopefully, effective NATO force can fully disarm Hezbollah in conjunction with the official Lebanese army. No UN force ever again please.