The Fort Worth Press - Israel says ready to move on pilot zones amid new Lebanon talks

US-brokered negotiations were taking place in the Italian capital over a framework agreement sealed last month after five rounds of talks in Washington, with Lebanese negotiators hoping for progress on an Israeli withdrawal.

The framework deal emerged after war broke out between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah on March 2 against the backdrop of the wider Middle East war.

It calls for an end to the war in Lebanon, disarmament of the Lebanese movement, the deployment of Lebanese troops in the south and for Israeli forces to steadily withdraw from the country in two "pilot zones".

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Tuesday that his country was "ready to move forward implementing these two pilot zones".

"I hope and tend to believe that this round of discussions in Rome will promote it."

The Lebanese presidency had announced on Monday that its delegation to Rome had been instructed "to demand the immediate start of Israeli forces' withdrawal from the two pilot zones before any further discussion".

AFP journalists saw delegation vehicles entering the US embassy compound in the heart of Rome under tight security on Tuesday morning ahead of the talks, while the embassy declined to comment when asked.

According to a Lebanese diplomatic source familiar with the content of the talks, "the Lebanese army is ready to gradually take control of the localities from which the Israeli army would withdraw".

But Hezbollah rejects the agreement outright despite Lebanese government pressure, lowering expectations of success in the negotiations.

Orna Mizrahi of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv said Israel was "willing to withdraw gradually", but on the condition that "that there will be no presence of Hezbollah in the areas that Israel is withdrawing from".

She added that Israel also seeks to ensure "that the Lebanese army will have the ability... to keep it as a neutralised zone and a neutralised place that Hezbollah cannot come in again."

A US military delegation began discussions with the Lebanese army in Beirut on Saturday on the process for Israeli withdrawal from one of these "pilot zones".

- Limited prospects -

The framework agreement was concluded after a fragile ceasefire came into effect last month in the war between Hezbollah and Israel.

The Israeli army has nonetheless continued limited strikes in the south and has been carrying out demolitions in villages it occupies, according to official Lebanese media.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported a strike on the southern town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa on Tuesday.

Israel's strikes and ground invasion have killed more than 4,300 people since the war started in early March, according to Lebanese authorities.

"The chances of a breakthrough in Rome are quite limited," Karim Bitar, a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, told AFP.

"What we might see instead is a kind of opportunity to show that the process is still in place... that there are negotiations continuing despite the opposition and the obstacles that are beginning to emerge."

Tehran had demanded the ceasefire in Lebanon in order to conclude a memorandum of understanding with Washington on June 17.

But the region has seen a renewed escalation in recent days, with the US carrying out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran ahead of the planned reimposition on Tuesday of its naval blockade on Iranian ports with ongoing attacks.

Iran wants to establish a link between negotiations over the regional war and Lebanon, "but we have the wish to disconnect it," said Mizrahi.

Tehran's priorities remain the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear file, she added.

"The Iranians are using Lebanon as an excuse. They will always use it as an excuse," she said.

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the regional war on March 2 by launching missiles at Israel in support of Iran.

Bitar, for his part, said that the risk of major fighting returning to Lebanon as a result of the regional escalation "is, of course, not negligible".

"But I think that Iran today will think twice before asking Hezbollah to launch new strikes against Israel," he said.

Tehran "wants to maintain Hezbollah as a long-term deterrent tool and does not want to use it immediately to open a new front," he said.

T.Mason--TFWP