Hezbollah: 'we reject these talks'
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Diplomats from Israel and Lebanon have been meeting in Washington for a fourth round of talks as Israeli forces continued to carry out strikes in southern Lebanon. We speak to a member of the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah on why it has no plans to give up its weapons. Also in the programme: As the head of the UN gives a stark warning about the most catastrophic El Niño yet, farmers around the world remind us what's at stake; and the meaning of new research into the magnetic fields of planets beyond our solar system.
(Photo: Destroyed buildings after an Israeli airstrike that targeted the city of Tyre, Lebanon. Credit: WAEL HAMZEH/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.3 | Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Henley. We are coming to you live from London. |
| 0:16.8 | Israel has kept up its military strikes on the south of Lebanon today, continuing its campaign |
| 0:22.5 | against the militant group Hezbollah, a day after President Trump asked the Israeli Prime Minister |
| 0:27.6 | to de-escalate the war that has been going on for more than three months now. Residents, |
| 0:32.9 | thousands of them of Lebanon, have fled their homes in search of safer areas. |
| 0:40.3 | The negotiations and the military threats to bomb Beirut and its southern suburbs to force |
| 0:46.7 | concessions are shameful. This is my land, my home, my honour. It's my duty to defend it. |
| 0:54.9 | Following Mr Trump's intervention, Lebanon's government said Israel would refrain from carrying out more attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut, which is still a stronghold of Hezbollah. |
| 1:06.7 | But that has failed to reassure many Lebanese people or to stop the broader war in the south. |
| 1:12.3 | In a few minutes, we can hear directly from a representative of Hezbollah |
| 1:15.7 | and whether or not he sees a route to a meaningful ceasefire now. |
| 1:20.3 | We'll also be hearing about the experiences of people in northern Israel. |
| 1:24.4 | First, Lebanon's deputy prime minister, Tarek Mitri, he's independent, not affiliated to any |
| 1:30.1 | particular party, and earlier he gave Newsauer his reaction to Israel accusing Hezbollah of breaking the |
| 1:36.9 | ceasefire. We knew that the agreement was on a partial ceasefire. It's a kind of limited de-escalation. Limited de-escalations are, by their very nature, precarious, and it's unfortunate that things are not going the way we would have hoped. We would have liked to have a general ceasefire, not just a partial one, and |
| 2:03.2 | it seems that we're not there yet. I don't think the war that Israel has launched on us is the |
| 2:08.5 | way to disarm Hezbollah, nor can we do that in a short period of time. We've been working |
| 2:16.4 | on that before the war broke, and we have moved perhaps slowly. |
| 2:23.3 | It's not quick enough. |
| 2:24.3 | We admit that. |
| 2:25.3 | But these were the limitations of what our army was capable of. |
... |
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