AS the 32nd day of the conflict began to light up the cedars of Lebanon, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) overcame its protracted deadlock over a ceasefire in that battered land and unanimously adopted Resolution 1701.

It is a document that illustrates at a number of points the problems that delayed the translation of an earlier Franco-US accord into a UNSC resolution by a number of days. The final text is an expected compromise that contains all too deliberate concessions to Israel to make it acceptable to it and the United States but which now shows greater sensitivity to a package of seven pre-eminently realistic proposals put forward by the government of Lebanon.

In moving towards a more even-handed text, the Security Council has been influenced by several developments. The United States had provided four clear weeks to the Israeli military to attain its military objectives. The determined resistance offered by the Hezbollah imposed an almost unprecedented human cost on Israel in the battlefield and retaliatory rocket attacks on towns in the northern districts of Israel, including Haifa. Israel for once failed to sweep its adversaries out of the targeted battle space and found that its legendary consensus in wars against Arabs was beginning to get frayed.

Evidently, its army now needed several more weeks to establish unchallenged authority right up to the Litani River and, more significantly, to pile up enhanced collective punishment on the civilians to break the concord between Hezbollah and the majority of people. This was becoming increasingly difficult as international outrage against atrocities in Lebanon intensified.

Secondly, the belated diplomacy by Arab-Islamic states was beginning to make some impact. The Islamic Conference succeeded in convening the newly created UN Human Rights Council which decided to carry out an investigation in Lebanon by a majority of 24 to 11 states. Together with earlier statements by the International Red Cross and international human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch, the Council’s debate focused on Israel’s actions in Lebanon which clearly fell within the purview of the war crimes regime now being tested in the Hague in cases pertaining to the Bosnian wars.

The Arab League’s endorsement of the Lebanese proposals found sympathetic resonance with President Jacques Chirac who signalled France’s readiness to revise the earlier draft rejected by Lebanon as too one-sided.

Third, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s announcement that Lebanon was prepared to deploy 15,000 of its own troops in southern Lebanon almost transformed the parameters of the debate about the nature as well as the mission of the force that Israel wanted to interject between the Blue Line — the international frontier — and the Litani river. Israel wanted a multinational force willing to undertake combat with Hezbollah to disarm it in pursuance of UN resolution 1559. It had tried hard to build a facade of legitimacy for its invasion by claiming that it would help restore the sovereignty of the Lebanese state in the south. Hezbollah has exposed the Israeli propaganda by supporting the Lebanese government’s decision to deploy its own army along with an expanded UN force.

Much was made by the United States and Israel about the underlying causes of the present conflict in a largely failed bid to attribute it almost entirely to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. Implicating Iran and Syria had also become a major objective because these two states had arguably built up Hezbollah’s demonstrated military capability.

Resolution 1701 meets this concern but in a manner that should not cause too much offence. The text is comprehensive enough, and ambiguous enough, to be interpreted in different ways and with different inflections. Resolution 1701 emphasises the need to address urgently the causes, including “the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli sources”. For Lebanon, the causes will also mean its nationals languishing in Israeli jails, the Sheba’a farms and routine violations of Lebanon’s land border, airspace and territorial waters since its formal withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000. The question of Sheba’a farms also finds a specific mention in the text.

Paragraphs 14 of this latest resolution calls upon the government of Lebanon to prevent, with the assistance of Unifil, the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related material. Unifil, the United Nations force, would be expanded to comprise 15,000 men to match the force deployed by Lebanon itself. Paragraph 15 asks all states to take necessary measures to prevent the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related material of all types; it also forbids provision of any technical training or assistance in the manufacture, maintenance or use of arms, etc.

If Resolution 1701 succeeds in securing cessation of hostilities within a week, Hezbollah would come out of the war with considerable human and material resources intact. The question of resupply will obviously depend to a large extent on the implementation of the other provisions of the resolution, especially the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and the progress in settling the Sheba’a farm issue.

Hezbollah became a formidable military force entirely because there was no other countervailing force to challenge Israeli occupation of Lebanon. In fact, it has made by far the most important single contribution to the defeat of the infamous Ariel Sharon plan for Lebanon. Resolution 1701 is constructed ostensibly around the concept of Lebanese sovereignty. If that objective is achieved in letter and spirit, the case for the state retaining a monopoly of military power becomes unexceptionable and Hezbollah’s transition to a full fledged political party fitting into the complex mosaic of Lebanon will be greatly facilitated.

Despite a commendable effort by France, the question of Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon has not been addressed with the precision that the United Nations Charter would demand; the Security Council has ended up speaking with a meek voice. In effect, it has called upon Israel to withdraw all its forces from southern Lebanon “in parallel” as the deployment of Lebanese army and UNIFIL begins. With Israel’s scant respect for UN resolutions, much would depend upon how it interprets the deliberately flexible provisions about the UN “request” to Israel to leave Lebanon.

Again, President Chirac’s demand for “the immediate cessation of hostilities” in Paragraph 1 is qualified by the words “in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations”. Considering that Israel has described the devastation of Lebanon as a “defensive operation” during the last one month, Resolution 1701 fails to lay down enforceable requirements for the guns to fall silent. It is without doubt a price that the international community has paid to meet the otherwise untenable demands made by Washington to separate the suspension of hostilities from a ceasefire as generally understood in the UN lexicon.

The Arabs will find some comfort in the extensive reference to several previous resolutions and statements in the preamble as well as, in the ultimate paragraph, to the need to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all the relevant UN resolutions including 242 and 338. The Bush presidency has been marked by a studied indifference to this aspect of the crisis and for its remaining two years, it may not evince much interest in it either. The reason for this pessimistic perception is none other than the continued commitment to the project for a New Middle East. The political engineering of this project lies in tatters all over the Middle East. Lebanon threw into bold relief one of its most glaring contradictions which for the people of the region has already become a veritable nightmare. In Iraq, the political strategy rested on near-independence for the Kurds without taking into account the chain of consequences for Turkey, Iran and Syria; more perniciously, it also aimed at dividing the Arabs on sectarian lines. The effort to win support of the Shia majority in Iraq by a brutal suppression of the Sunni opponents of the occupation has brought the country to the brink of an open-ended sectarian civil war.

In Lebanon, an opposite strategy of decimating not only the predominantly Shia Hezbollah but also the civil population in the Shia south, including southern Beirut, would leave a bitter legacy behind. The massive pro-Lebanon and pro-Hezbollah demonstration in the Sadr City in Baghdad showed that this opportunistic tactic is no longer a secret and that it would be eventually counter-productive. In particular, this bizarre policy of curtailing Iran’s influence in the region by wooing the Shia population in Iraq and massacring it in Lebanon will have the opposite effect. The negative ripples of this short-sighted policy would be felt all over the Islamic world.

The Security Council has moved towards the bridge across which lies peace and security for Lebanon. The chariot it is riding is weak and wobbly. The need of the hour is statesmanship of the highest order, not manoeuvres of low cunning that we have witnessed since hostilities broke out.

It should freely draw upon the diplomatic and moral resources of the Arab and Muslim states to accumulate power and influence. Lebanon is, in many ways, a test of the UN system as indeed, an opportunity to restore its salience. The Arab League and the OIC must maintain the momentum of the efforts begun at Putrajaya and Beirut. On its part, Pakistan, on its independence day, must renew the covenant it made with the world of Islam 59 years ago.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

HIS devotion is to the word. His power is of seduction. He goes to seek out problems where they are. The impetus of inspiration is very much part of his style. Books reflect the breadth of his tastes very well. He stopped smoking to have the moral authority to combat tobacco addiction.

He likes to prepare food recipes with a kind of scientific fervour. He keeps himself in excellent physical condition with various hours of gymnastics daily and frequent swimming. Invincible patience. Ironclad discipline. The force of his imagination stretches him to the unforeseen.

José Martí is his foremost author and he has had the talent to incorporate Martí’s thinking into the sanguine torrent of a Marxist revolution. The essence of his own thinking could lie in the certainty that in undertaking mass work it is fundamental to be concerned about individuals.

That could explain his absolute confidence in direct contact. He has a language for each occasion and a distinct means of persuasion according to his interlocutors. He knows how to put himself at the level of each one, and possesses a vast and varied knowledge that allows him to move with facility in any media. One thing is definite: he is where he is, how he is and with whom he is.

Fidel Castro is there to win. His attitude in the face of defeat, even in the most minimal actions of everyday life, would seem to obey a private logic: he does not even admit it, and does not have a minute’s peace until he succeeds in inverting the terms and converting it into victory.

His supreme aide is his memory and he uses it, to the point of abuse, to sustain speeches or private conversations with overwhelming reasoning and arithmetical operations of an incredible rapidity. He requires incessant information, well masticated and digested. He breakfasts with no less than 200 pages of news. Responses have to be exact, given that he is capable of discovering the most minimal contradiction in a casual phrase. He is a voracious reader. He is prepared to read any paper that comes into his hands at any hour.

He does not lose any occasion to inform himself. During the Angola war he described a battle in such detail at an official reception that it was hard work to convince a European diplomat that Fidel Castro had not participated in it.

His vision of Latin America in the future is the same as that of Bolívar and Martí, an integrated and autonomous community, capable of moving the destiny of the world. The country about which he knows the most after Cuba is the United States: of the nature of its people, their power structures, the secondary intentions of its governments. And this has helped him to handle the incessant torment of the blockade.

He has never refused to answer any question, however provocative it might be, nor has he ever lost his patience. In terms of those who are economical with the truth, in order not to give him any more concerns than those that he already has: he knows it. He said to one official who did so: “You are hiding truths from me, in order not to worry me, but when I finally discover them I will die from the impact of having to confront so many truths I have not been told.” But gravest are the truths concealed to cover up deficiencies, because alongside the enormous achievements that sustain the revolution - the political, scientific, sporting, cultural achievements - there is a colossal bureaucratic incompetence, affecting daily life, and particularly domestic happiness.

When he talks with people in the street, his conversation regains the expressiveness and crude frankness of genuine affection. They call him: Fidel. They address him informally, they argue with him, they claim him. It is then that one discovers the unusual human being that the reflection of his own image does not let us see. This is the Fidel Castro that I believe I know. A man of austere habits and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned formal education of cautious words and subdued tones, and incapable of conceiving any idea that is not colossal.

I have heard him evoking things that he could have done in another way to gain time in life. On seeing him very overburdened with the weight of so many distant destinies, I asked him what it was that he most wished to do in this world, and he immediately answered me: “Stand on a corner.” —Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a Nobel prize-winning novelist. This is an edited extract of an article from the Cuban newspaper Granma. Fidel Castro is 80 today.

A FEW months ago President Musharraf on a brief visit to Karachi took exception to “odd looking and indecent billboards” and ordered the city nazim to allow only “proper and authorised billboards” to be displayed. One is glad that he pointed to this anomaly.

But one wishes he had also identified some of the other incongruities which have disfigured the landscape — like the open rubbish dumps found at almost every street corner, which are not only an eyesore but a health hazard.

No matter which way a pedestrian turns he finds these gulags of putrid waste with their rancid odours, distilled by an assortment of decomposing leftovers and a variety of greasy plastic bags.

After he has managed to hold his breath for as long as his polluted lungs allow him, there are the construction sites, huge scaffoldings of leafed steel, surrounded by potholes of dirty water, cement and mounds of sand, perpetually throwing up clouds of dust, and gradually encroaching upon and chiselling the edge of thoroughfares.

When a motorist drives, locked in the eternal traffic jams, he sees people throwing sticky toffee wrappers out of car windows. And if he chances to look up at the cluster of high rise residential tenements, streaked as if they had been crying, he sees balconies decorated with yesterday’s washing.

The recent rains made things just that much worse. The pedestrian and the motorist had to trudge through the monsoon-washed grid of streets, with water running through all its ruts and the rills dribbling the shaly paths. Whatever happened to the sensibilities of the people, to the sense of order, tidiness and cleanliness for which Karachi was once famous?

What is also most unfortunate is that there doesn’t appear to be an official or agency at which one can point an accusing finger or vent one’s spleen. All one hears is a lot of buck passing, as was witnessed after the recent showers that turned the famous Clifton underpass into a huge pond. If the dialogue had been scripted by Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, against the backdrop of a tennis match, it might have sounded something like this... “Our job is to build the underpass, not to pump out the water.

That’s the work of the city government” ... The ball lands on the other side of the net... “How can we pump out the water when the electricity has been switched off?”... The ball bounces back to the server and misses him. Suddenly the linesman, who has a distinct central European accent, interrupts ... “The electricity was switched off because we don’t have enough power.” That’s when a spectator in the audience turns to the server and in a high-pitched voice shouts ...”Why did you have to build an underpass in the first place, when in every other part of the city you are building overpasses?”

Readers who are still miffed by the totally inadequate drainage facilities in Clifton during the southwest monsoon should read Meher Alvi’s trenchant observations published in Dawn a week ago. They more or less sum up the state of helplessness experienced by the citizen who is gradually beginning to endorse the view that poor drainage is one of the occupational hazards of life in the Third World.

Old timers point out that it wasn’t always like this, and talk, somewhat nostalgically, about the days when Mayor Sohrab Kavasji Hormuzdyar Katrak was entrusted with the task of maintaining order and keeping the place clean. The streets were washed every morning a couple of hours before sunrise. Every locality had a number of metal bins and there was a proper system for the disposal of garbage.

Of course, Katrak was not dealing with a population of 14 million people, and the number of inhabitants in the entire city in his time was probably less than what it is in modern day Liaquatabad. The impression nevertheless remains that the city elders knew what they were doing and that there is some merit in having a unified system of administration — without interference from other quarters. It makes it much easier to bell the cat.

Garbage disposal does remind one of the way the Chinese dealt with the problem in the days when Mao-Zedong ruled the world’s most populous country. The method used, which for want of a better expression could be referred to as ‘the collective conscience,’ would have probably found favour with the Catholic priests. Once a week, the head of each family in the village would assemble and await the arrival of the local representative of the Communist Party.

After listening to what he had to say, each delegate then confessed how he had conspired against the spirit of the revolution, and the paths he had wilfully traversed to disturb the harmony. The misdemeanour that kept popping up was — chucking one’s garbage onto the road. Once the entire congregation had heard a villager’s confession they made jolly sure he played according to the rules. If he still couldn’t kick the habit he was either fined or locked up. If the denizens of Karachi are sick of looking at those rubbish dumps day in and day out they should get together and do something about it, instead of complaining on television. There’s really no point in contacting the authorities. By the time they find out which the concerned department is or whom they should contact in the ministry, the government would have changed.

Now it’s time to get back to those billboards, or hoardings, as they are known in the advertising world, which was really the subject of this column. There is a law which circumscribes the amount of disfiguring outdoor advertisers are entitled to, and there are strict rules which people who erect these posters are expected to follow. The distance between billboards should be 400 feet, the size should not exceed 60 by 20 feet, the height should be uniform, the poles should be painted in silver to prevent accidents, they should not be located near electric wires and their construction should be undertaken by qualified engineers.

According to reports, out of the 17,000 billboards in the city, only 6,000 have been ‘legally’ erected. Around 11,000 hoardings are unauthorised and their continued existence is protected by those who instal them. These worthies are invariably supported by political party leaders or officials of various town administrators.

Approximately 70 per cent of the billboards are controlled by the CDGK. The rest are under the control of the air force, army, CAA, Pakistan Railways and various cantonment boards. The question is, will the president’s order be respected and obeyed in letter and spirit? Quite a few billboards have been knocked down. But a lot still remains to be done. The danger is that the crusade might end up the same way as other well meaning schemes — like the tinted glass episode.

A few months ago the Karachi police started to crack down on vehicles which exhibited dark tinted glasses, some of which didn’t carry authorised number plates. They served a number of purposes. They allowed criminals to move about with impunity, indemnified owners of stolen cars against identification and protected women from the glare of the cruel sun.

The police were suddenly driven by a gale of furious purpose. They rounded up around 400 such vehicles whose owners had been zealously guarding their privacy. Then the men in the white uniforms happened to chance upon a car whose occupants were barricaded behind sheets of thick dark grey glass. It belonged to the minister of religious affairs who probably believed that as he was in a unique position to communicate with the Absolute, was therefore above the law. He promptly contacted the home secretary. The policemen were slapped on the wrists, made to apologise, and the charade had to be called off.