US says G8 believes up to Israel when to halt attacks

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, July 16 (Reuters) The United States today said World leaders would not dictate to Israel conditions for ending its campaign in Lebanon because it is Israel's ''sovereign decision on when to end this.'' Nicholas Burns, no 3 in the US State Department, who briefed reporters on the American view of a Group of Eight statement on the West Asia, said Israeli military operations in Lebanon could stop if Hizbollah releases abducted Israeli soldiers and stops shelling Israel.

''The leaders here didn't presume to set up some kind of test where Israel would have to stop if certain conditions were met,'' he told reporters at a summit in Russia of the world's leading industrialised nations.

Instead, ''it was simply the expectation,'' said Burns, that the Israelis would end the operation if Islamic militant group Hizbollah stopped deadly cross-border rocket attacks and returned soldiers it captured in a frontier raid last week.

Burns disagreed with French President Jacques Chirac's remarks that the G8 leaders had denounced Israel's bombardment of Lebanon in response to the Hizbollah attacks as disproportionate.

''That word is not in the statement,'' said Burns. ''Not in the French version either,'' added White House spokesman Tony Snow.

The disagreement reflected underlying tensions between the United States, which strongly backs Israel, and other G8 states like France and Russia which think the Jewish state's tough military response against Hizbollah has been excessive.

The G8 statement had been carefully constructed to paper over their differences.

The G8 statement did not mention the US charge that Iran and Syria are assisting Hizbollah guerrillas.

But Burns said the two countries were clearly identified in the document's reference to ''these extremist elements and those that support them.'' ''There wasn't much of an argument at all or much of a discussion at all on who was responsible for this,'' he said.

''The United States and the G8 did not call today for a cease-fire,'' Burns said. He said ''everybody realizes'' that for the violence to stop Hizbollah must stop its attacks.

The G8 document says the most urgent priority is to ''create conditions for the cessation of violence that will be sustainable.'' Burns said the Israelis were not involved in G8 discussions about conditions for an end to violence that include the freeing by Israel of Palestinian ministers and parliamentarians arrested in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack out of Gaza.

President George W Bush has refused to deal with the Hamas-led Palestinian government, calling Hamas terrorists.

Burns said G8 leaders hoped a U.N. mission in the region will report back and make some recommendations on how to end the violence, possibly including an international monitoring presence on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

REUTERS DKS BD0140