Bush Slip Puts Pressure on Syria

As diplomatic efforts today centred on sending an international force to southern Lebanon, unguarded comments by President Bush revealed his immediate focus was getting Syria to halt Hizbullah actions.

Unaware that his microphone was switched on President Bush was recorded telling Tony Blair that Syria should press Hizbullah to "stop doing this shit".

In a private conversation with the prime minister at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, President Bush also revealed and that his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, may travel to the region soon.

Earlier Tony Blair called for an international stability force to move into southern Lebanon as "the only way" of stopping bloodshed in the Middle East spiralling out of control.

He warned: "The situation is very serious indeed. If we do not stop it, this is going to escalate even further - this has escalated significantly in the past week. If it escalates further, we are going to have a very dangerous position indeed."

He said the Middle East crisis, with Israeli jets continuing to bomb Beirut, had overshadowed the G8 summit in St Petersburg and added that it was "no coincidence" that the action had escalated from the initial kidnap of Israeli soldiers.

Mr Blair held private talks with the United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan, this morning before the summit's final session began.

Afterwards, he told reporters: "The only way, in my view, we are going to get a cessation of hostilities is if we have the deployment of an international force into that area."

The prime minister repeatedly stressed the importance of a stabilisation force - in which Britain is unlikely to play a major part - saying: "If we can't get such a force to act in that way, then I think it's very difficult to see how we are going to restore calm."

Mr Annan had a series of talks with other world leaders in St Petersburg and endorsed Mr Blair's call for a stability force.

He said his team in the Middle East would report back towards the end of this week, adding: "The council should then discuss it, and not only discuss it, but pursue the package that the prime minister and I have discussed, including the stabilisation force.

"And the sooner that discussion and the decisions are taken by the council, the better it is. But the parties need not wait for the full implementation of that to stop ... hostilities and to spare the civilians."

However, senior Israeli officials say Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is opposed to the deployment of international forces in Lebanon.

Earlier Miri Eisin, the Israeli government spokesman, said it was too early to talk about a new international military presence.

"I don't think we're at that stage yet. We're at the stage where we want to be sure that Hizbullah is not deployed at our northern border." In his unguarded comments to Mr Blair, President Bush seemed to complain about the attitude of the UN's Kofi Annan.

"I don't like the sequence of it," Bush told Mr Blair. "His attitude is basically ceasefire and everything else happens." Blair replied: "I think the thing that is really difficult is you can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed."

Later, Bush said he felt like telling Annan to telephone Syrian President Bashir Assad "and make something happen".

"We're not blaming Israel and we're not blaming the Lebanese government," he said.

In a sign that diplomatic differences between G8 member had been exacerbated by the recent fighting in the Middle East, the French president, Jacques Chirac, attacked Israel's action in Lebanon as "aberrant".

In a press conference marking the end of the summit, President Chirac, who sent his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, to Beirut on Monday, referred to the deaths of Lebanese civilians: "This unfortunate population ... is bearing the consequences of behaviour which is both violent and aberrant," he said.

Asked about the idea of a stabilisation force, President Chirac said "some means of coercion" may be needed to enforce the UN resolution that called for the disarmament of militias like Hizbullah.

"The application of [resolution] 1559 is the essential element, and this will probably require some means of coercion," Mr Chirac said.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who was hosting the summit said afterwards that Moscow was considering sending troops.

"So far there is no decision yet on sending peacekeeping troops. When there will be a decision we will consider whether to take part," he said.

Mr Putin added that he was not certain that the return of abducted Israeli soldiers would stop fighting in the Middle East.

"I don't think the situation has gotten out of control but I don't have the certainty that the return of the soldiers will stop the conflict, " he said.