Washington. The US State Department said the first high-level meeting between Israel and Lebanon in decades was “productive” and will continue with the aim of launching direct negotiations.

In a statement released on Tuesday after the two-hour session in Washington between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the ambassadors of Israel and Lebanon to the United States, the department said, “All sides agreed to launch direct negotiations at a mutually agreed time and venue.”

Israel has been fighting Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and demands that the group, which opposed the talks and was not represented, be disarmed.

Separately, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the historic Israeli-Lebanese meeting will be very important if the talks create a change in their actions.

“The truth is that Hezbollah and Israel have always helped each other to destabilize the government of Lebanon,” the secretary-general told UN reporters Tuesday while the ambassadors of Lebanon and Israel were meeting in Washington with Rubio.

Whenever Israel occupies part of Lebanon, Hezbollah uses it as a pretext to say it can’t disarm and must keep up the resistance, Guterres said, and Israel uses Hezbollah rocket attacks into its territory as a pretext for massive operations against Lebanon.

Lebanon’s government is committed to having the monopoly on the use of force, which implies the disarmament of Hezbollah, Guterres said. “So, it’s time for Israel and Lebanon to be working together instead of Lebanon being the victim,” he said.

Israel Demands 'Complete Separation' Between Lebanon and Iran
In a statement to reporters Tuesday after the historic talks, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter praised his Lebanese counterparts for their cooperation in the meeting in Washington despite pressure from Hezbollah not to.

“We discovered today that we’re on the same side of the equation. That’s the most positive thing we could have come away with,” Leiter said. “We are both united in liberating Lebanon from an occupying power dominated by Iran called Hezbollah.”

The ambassador highlighted several areas of consensus while making it clear that Israel needs to see Lebanon “completely” separate itself from Tehran and its proxy Hezbollah.

“The Lebanese government made it very clear that they will no longer be occupied by Hezbollah and Iran has been weakened; Hezbollah is dramatically weakened,” Leiter said. “This is an opportunity.”

Heavy Toll in Lebanon
Israeli strikes have killed a total of 2,124 people during the six-week war, Lebanon’s health ministry said earlier in the day. Among them are 254 women, 168 children and 88 health workers. Another 6,921 have been wounded.

Israel has halted its strikes in Beirut since last Wednesday, when a massive barrage on the capital drew international outcry, but strikes and ground fighting have continued in the country’s south.

The war in Lebanon started on March 2, when the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired missiles across the border, two days after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran.