Hezbollah leader agreed to temporary ceasefire days before attack, Lebanese foreign minister says

CNN
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Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just days before his assassination by Israel.

The temporary ceasefire was called for by US President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and other allies during the UN General Assembly last week.

“He [Nasrallah] agreed, he agreed,” Habib Christiane Amanpour said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

“We were in complete agreement. Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire but consulted with Hezbollah. The [Lebanese House] Spokesman Nabih Berri consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and French about the incident. And they told us that Mr. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu also agreed with both presidents' statement [Biden and Macron.]”

White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein was then prepared to travel to Lebanon to negotiate the ceasefire, Habib continued.

“They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed to it, and so we got Hezbollah’s approval of it, and you know what has happened since then,” the foreign minister added.

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday.

A day earlier, the United States, France, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Qatar called for a 21-day ceasefire in a joint statement “to… “To give diplomacy a chance to succeed and avoid further escalations across the border.”

A Western source familiar with the negotiations also said Hezbollah agreed to the temporary ceasefire shortly before the US made the proposal public last week. The source did not say whether the decision came directly from Nasrallah, but said the movement would have needed his approval to agree. A second source familiar with the talks agreed that the US knew Hezbollah agreed to the ceasefire.

However, a Biden administration official told CNN that Nasrallah's own approval of the deal is “not something we have heard before.” If true, [it] was never communicated to us.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller didn't rule it out, but also said the US didn't know anything about it.

“I can’t say if he ever agreed to it and told anyone in Lebanon. Obviously this could have been something we didn't know about. I can tell you if that is true, it was never communicated to us in any form,” Miller told CNN at a press conference on Thursday.

“We had a series of diplomatic meetings to discuss the proposals we wanted to put forward. “I think all parties were well aware of the proposals we wanted to put forward, but at no point in those discussions did we receive any word that Hezbollah had agreed or would agree to this,” Miller said.

Hezbollah has never officially announced its position publicly. It appeared that Hezbollah was waiting to see what Israel would do once the US, France and the other allies released the statement announcing the ceasefire on Wednesday evening.

A US official previously told CNN that the US-led statement also received the green light from Israel after several days of joint work on it. In a hastily arranged call that evening, senior Biden administration officials confidently told reporters: “The ceasefire will last for 21 days” across the Lebanese-Israeli border.

But hours later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would “continue to take full force against Hezbollah.” Israeli officials tried to explain the incident as an “honest misunderstanding” and said the proposal was “the beginning of a process that could ultimately lead to a ceasefire.”

The U.S. official said the government backed away from enforcing last week's ceasefire plan when it learned Israel might try to take out Nasrallah.

Responding to a question about America's declining influence in the region, Habib said Washington is “always important in this regard.”

“I don’t think we have an alternative. We need the help of the United States. Whether we'll get it or not, we're not sure yet, but [the] The United States is very important and crucial for the ceasefire to come about,” Habib said.