(20 Nov 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++QUALITY AS INCOMING++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Beirut, Lebanon – 20 November 2024
1. Various of Beirut skyline, white smoke rising
2. Amos Hochstein, U.S. senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden arriving
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Amos Hochstein, U.S. senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden:
“I just concluded another meeting with Speaker Berri (Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri). The meeting today built on the meeting yesterday and made additional progress. So I will travel from here, in a couple hours, to Israel to try to bring this to a close, if we, if we can."
4. Various of meeting between Hochstein and Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Amos Hochstein, U.S. senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden:
"So I know this will be disappointing to all of people here, but I am not negotiate this in public. So I am not going to go into what the issues are. I was here, we discussed it here as planned. If we made progress I would go to Israel and make those additional discussions there based on the conversations here, and see what we can do."
6. Various of meeting
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Amos Hochstein, U.S. senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden:
"There is one president at a time. We are going to work with the incoming administration. We are already going to be discussing this with them. They will be fully aware of everything we are doing, as is, as President Biden said there will be an orderly transfer of power and I don’t think that will be an issue here."
8. Cameras
STORYLINE:
U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, who has spent months trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, held a second round of talks on Wednesday with Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah who has been meditating on their behalf.
Hochstein told reporters the talks had made “additional progress,” and that he would be heading to Israel “to try to bring this to a close, if we can.”
He declined to say what the sticking points are.
On Tuesday, Hochstein said an agreement to end the Israel-Hezbollah war is “within our grasp” after talks in Lebanon.
The comments came as Hezbollah’s allies in the Lebanese government said the militant group had responded positively to the proposal, which would entail both its fighters and Israeli ground forces withdrawing from a U.N. buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
The buffer zone would be policed by thousands of additional U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops.
Israel has called for a stronger enforcement mechanism, potentially including the ability to conduct military operations against any Hezbollah threats, something Lebanon is likely to oppose.
Israel’s defense minister, however, said Wednesday that his country insists on the right to act militarily against Hezbollah in any agreement to end the fighting in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s government is likely to view any such demand as an infringement on its sovereignty, complicating efforts to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that erupted into all-out war in September.
Lebanese officials mediating between Israel and Hezbollah have called for a return to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between the sides.
It calls for Hezbollah and Israeli forces to withdraw from a buffer zone in southern Lebanon patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops.
AP video shot by Fadi Al Tawil and Hussein Saneh
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