WASHINGTON (AFP) - A leading Republican senator urged US President George W. Bush to call for an immediate ceasefire in the war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now. President Bush must call for an immediate ceasefire. This madness must stop," Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a possible candidate in the 2008 presidential election, said on the Senate floor.
The Bush administration has been under pressure from Arab and European states to press Israel into halting its offensive, but has received relatively limited pressure from US lawmakers -- especially those in his own party -- to do the same.
Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and a critic of Bush's war in Iraq, said the US link to Israel was a "special and historic one" but also coming at the cost of relations with Arab states.
"It need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060731/pl_afp/mideastconflictlebanon_060731203324
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