UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived in Israel Tuesday on the second leg of a major Middle East tour aimed at shoring up a fragile truce between the Jewish state and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Annan met Defence Minister Amir Peretz, who said that Israeli forces will remain in south Lebanon for several more weeks and will leave once an expanded UN force begins deploying in numbers. Israel forces "will remain for several weeks, no longer than that," Peretz told reporters after the meeting.
"As far as we are concerned, the desire to leave southern Lebanon is that of the state of Israel and will happen immediately after (international) forces arrive in reasonable numbers," he said.