Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib told CNN that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just days before he was assassinated by Israel.
US President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and other allies called for a temporary ceasefire during the United Nations General Assembly last week.
“he [Nasrallah] “He agreed, he agreed,” Habib told Christiane Amanpour in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
Habib added that White House Senior Advisor Amos Hochstein was then scheduled to go to Lebanon to negotiate a ceasefire.
Habib continued: “They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed to this, so we also got Hezbollah’s approval for this and you know what has happened since then.”
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Friday in the southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
A day earlier, a joint statement issued by 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. “To give diplomacy a chance to succeed and avoid further cross-border escalation.”
In response to a question about the decline in US influence in the region, Habib said that Washington is “always important in this regard.”
“I don’t think we have an alternative. We need US help. Whether we get that or not, we’re not sure yet, but.” [the] Habib said that the United States is very important and vital to achieving a ceasefire.
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