In Rome, Ministers Call for Lebanon Cease-Fire

By Sylvia Poggioli

Published July 26, 2006 at 2:00 PM MDT

A group of foreign ministers makes urgent calls for a sustainable cease-fire along the Israel-Lebanon border -- and the deployment of an international force under a United Nations mandate.

Many of the ministers said they wanted an immediate end to the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia. But the conference could not agree on a way to achieve that.

The sessions included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterparts from Europe, Lebanon, and Arab nations. The meetings were arranged in a bid to find a "permanent" solution to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.

Sylvia Poggioli

Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.

See stories by Sylvia Poggioli

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