US's Rice intends to visit West Asia spokesman says

WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) U S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intends to travel to the West Asia East to seek to calm violence in the region where Israel has bombarded Lebanon for days and the militant group Hizbollah has fired rockets into the Jewish state.

Rice will return to the United States later today from a trip to Russia before deciding when to make her Middle East trip, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

''At some point in the future, the secretary intends to travel to the region,'' he said.

The United States was immediately focusing its diplomacy on the United Nations after some European leaders have called for an international force to be sent into Lebanon, he said.

Rice's trip would concentrate on addressing what the United States considers the root cause of the violence -- Hizbollah's attacks on Israel, he added.

Today, Israeli air strikes killed 41 people across Lebanon, including 10 civilians hit on a southern bridge, on the sixth day of a bombardment that has wreaked the heaviest destruction in Lebanon for over 20 years.

U N Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Security Council members would start work on a detailed agreement on deploying a multinational security force to south Lebanon.

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