EU foreign policy chief calls for immediate Lebanon ceasefire

The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana Friday called for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East ahead of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's expected return to the region.

"What is important is to get a ceasefire as soon as possible," Solana told AFP, when asked if Rice should seek a different strategy to resolve the crisis in Lebanon.

"We are going to consider now first a humanitarian component, but without a political settlement, a ceasefire, it will be very difficult to do it," he said, amid mounting calls for an immediate halt to the fighting.

Rice, in Malaysia for a regional security forum which has focused on Israel's military operations in Lebanon, as well as attempts to engage North Korea, will leave on Friday, a day earlier than expected.

Her staff declined to say where she was going, though all signs pointed to the Middle East for a return trip after her visits to Beirut, Jerusalem and an international Lebanon crisis conference in Rome earlier in the week.

The United States maintains there is no chance of an immediate ceasefire, unless such a truce is part of a more comprehensive solution to end the fighting in the region.

Foreign ministers from the European Union are to hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday next week to discuss the Middle East crisis.

Solana said Thursday that the EU would be willing to contribute peacekeeping forces to Lebanon if a United Nations resolution allowed it.

French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday rejected sending NATO troops to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force but Solana said the EU, some of whose members are also NATO members, would be "willing to help."

The European Commission on Wednesday announced a further 40 million euros (50 million dollars) in humanitarian aid to help victims of the conflict after releasing 10 million euros last week.