TEXAS, 7 August 2006 — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned yesterday that there would be violence in the Middle East “for some time to come” even after the adoption of a UN resolution aimed at ending the conflict.

Rice said she expected the UN Security Council to take up the resolution today or tomorrow, but added: “I want to emphasize it’s the first step, not the only step” to halting clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.

“We’re trying to deal with a problem that has been festering and brewing in Lebanon now for years and years and years, and so it’s not going to be solved by one resolution in the Security Council,” she said.

“I would hope that you would see very early on an end to the kind of large-scale violence, large-scale military operations,” allowing for the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon, she said.

“But I can’t say that you should rule out that there could be skirmishes of some kind for some time to come,” she told reporters here after talks with US President George W. Bush at his nearby ranch.

Rice also sought to ease Lebanese concerns about the resolution after Beirut signalled that the measure must explicitly call for a full Israeli troop pullout from southern Lebanon. “No one wants to see Israel permanently in lebanon. Nobody wants to do that. The Israelis don’t want it, the Lebanese don’t want it, so I think there is a basis here for moving forward,” she said. “I think that the differences here are not very great, obviously Israel would have liked to see other things in this resolution. Lebanon would have liked to have seen other things in this resolution,” she told ABC television.

She also insisted yesterday that Lebanon must disarm Hezbollah, after the Beirut government criticized a draft UN resolution on the militia’s conflict against Israel.

Rice spoke after government sources in Lebanon said Prime Minister Fuad Siniora demanded changes to the draft Security Council text aimed at ending the fighting, agreed on Saturday by France and the United States.

“There will have to be a disarmament of the militias in accordance with Lebanon’s obligations,” Rice said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“If you look at the statements of the Prime Minister and his Council of Ministers, which include Hezbollah ministers, they have reaffirmed those obligations.” The draft resolution, likely to be approved by the Security Council this week, calls for “full implementation” of the Taif Accords which ended the Lebanese civil war in 1990 and previous UN resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006) that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon.

But a government source in Lebanon who asked not to be named, said earlier yesterday the government would not be able to stop Hezbollah using arms without an explicit demand for a full Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon.

The draft Franco-US resolution, which demands a “full cessation of hostilities” between Hezbollah and Israel, makes no call for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops currently engaged in major incursions in south Lebanon.

The resolution “will not resolve the crisis neither for the good of Lebanon or for Israel. Israel will not have a guarantee of secure frontiers and Lebanon will not recover all its occupied territory.” “The Lebanese government would not be able to prevent Hezbollah from using arms if a part of Lebanon is reoccupied by Israel,” said Siniora, according to the source.