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The United Nations Security Council in New York -
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UN Secretary-General heads this week to the Middle East, where he plans to press the Israelis and regional leaders to bring an end to Israel's 17-day assault on Gaza, diplomats and UN officials said.
Among the leaders Ban intends to meet are Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his foreign minister Tzipi Livni, King Abdullah of Jordan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He will also travel to Lebanon and Turkey to meet leaders there.
Israel's military campaign against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip is expected to dominate all of his meetings in the Middle East, diplomats and UN officials said.
"He's very keen to be out there calling for a ceasefire," said one UN official. "Just stop the fighting, stop it now."
Ban leaves for the region on Tuesday and is expected back in New York a week later, UN officials said.
International Middle East envoy Tony Blair said after talks with Egypt's Mubarak on Monday that "the elements of an agreement of the immediate ceasefire are there and are now being worked on very hard in great detail."
Mubarak has been pushing a ceasefire proposal that Israel has said it was willing to consider.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan said delegates who held talks in Cairo on Sunday on a ceasefire had returned to Damascus for consultations with the group's leadership and to formulate a final position on the Egyptian initiative.
Israel, which rejected a UN ceasefire resolution last week as unworkable, wants Hamas rocket attacks to end and to prevent Hamas from rearming via tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, in an area known as the Philadelphi corridor.
Ban has been unusually vocal during the Gaza crisis, repeatedly calling on both sides to halt their attacks as civilian casualties in Gaza mount. He told Olmert in a telephone call on Friday he was disappointed the Security Council's ceasefire resolution had been ignored.
The South Korean UN secretary-general's predecessor Kofi Annan emerged as a key mediator in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. He helped broker a ceasefire and the deployment of UN peacekeepers.
National diplomats accredited to the United Nations say that Ban is less charismatic than Annan but that his brand of "quiet diplomacy" might be effective in the current crisis.
They say he proved an able mediator with the military junta in Myanmar after a devastating cyclone there in early 2008 and with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in urging him to speed up deployment of UN-African Union peacekeepers in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region.
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Post new commentfarhatmirza said on 2009-01-21 @ 09:43 NZDT: Report abusive post
Dear Sir/Madam, If and when the information is declassified, it may come out that the connection between 'shoe-treatment' of G.Bush in Iraq and, the carnage if not the genocide that followed in Ghaza, was not, after all, the figment of ones imagination. Regards, fjm
sheildzee said on 2009-01-20 @ 19:34 NZDT: Report abusive post
Please report accurately. Hamas did not "seize control of Gaza from Abbas's Fatah forces in 2007 ...". You rightly state that Hamas won the general election so Hamas did not "seize" anything. Your point about Fatah is superfluous anyway so just stick to the facts - " Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in democratic elections held in 2006." That is the truth. The power struggle that followed the democratic election of Hama is another issue entirely.
flyer said on 2009-01-19 @ 16:50 NZDT: Report abusive post
Whew, a ceasefire of sorts - obviously the protest of the southland cafe owner against Israeli women has brought everyone to the negotiating table - AS IF.....
farhatmirza said on 2009-01-19 @ 11:42 NZDT: Report abusive post
Dear Sir/Madam, To say that Israel funded Hamas looks improbable, if not ridiculous. However, I won't be surprised if Hamas took a cue of two from Hagana, Irgun, or Lehi. Regards, fjm
philipmcc said on 2009-01-19 @ 10:01 NZDT: Report abusive post
I feel sad enough about the Gaza protagonists each claiming that they are the 'good guys' and the others are the 'bad guys', and the suffering that creates. But as I read these comments I see the same human tendency being acted out. So many claim that their view is 'right' and the others are 'wrong'. This stance is a major factor in all conflict. While that fear-based tendency persists we will go on having wars like Gaza.