Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

First, I thank the honourable member for Mitchell. It is the second question he has asked me about this issue in a couple of weeks, and I appreciate his interest. The government welcomes Security Council resolution 1701, which was passed through the Security Council a few days ago, calling for the full cessation of hostilities followed by the deployment of Lebanese government and UNIFIL—United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon—forces in southern Lebanon and parallel withdrawal by the Israeli forces. The resolution authorises an increase in strength of UNIFIL to 15,000. Those troops will no doubt largely come from Mediterranean countries, and perhaps from some South-East Asian countries, to support 15,000 Lebanese troops which the Lebanese government has said it will deploy in southern Lebanon.

I note that the cessation of hostilities is due to enter into force in about one hour’s time, at 3 pm our time. The Israelis have agreed to a cessation of hostilities and Hezbollah has indicated that it does as well, but, for this resolution to succeed, there must be full and complete implementation. The government has no illusions that this will be very difficult. We do not know the extent to which Hezbollah will cease hostilities immediately. It said it reserves the right to attack Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. We do not know the extent to which the Lebanese Army will be capable of fulfilling Lebanon’s obligations, not only under this Security Council resolution but under the previous Security Council resolution, 1559. We know that UNIFIL, the United Nations force in Lebanon, does not have the authority to disarm Hezbollah and this is, after all, a chapter VI, not a chapter VII, resolution. We know that the Lebanese cabinet is still divided and has yet to resolve its divisions on the issue of disarming Hezbollah, and we hope it will make a positive decision to support the disarmament of Hezbollah soon.

I mention all of these things because these are unanswered questions. Positive answers to these questions are fundamental to the successful implementation of this resolution. There are a lot of ifs and a lot of buts about the resolution, and it remains unclear as to whether it will be effective, but let me say finally that there are two countries in particular that we would hope would strongly support this resolution. One of those countries is Syria, and the other is Iran. We would hope that Iran would take a more responsible position and start to support a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict as well, something that Iran has not done up until now. Until all countries and organisations in the region support a two-state solution, there will not be peace in the Middle East.

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