Martha Rial, Post-Gazette
	U.S. Rep. John Murtha talks with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board yesterday.

Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha said yesterday that he favored an immediate cease-fire in the fighting in Lebanon.

His stand places the veteran Johnstown Democrat at odds with the Israeli government, and -- on yet anther major Middle Eastern policy issue -- at odds with the Bush administration as well.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government yesterday sent troops deeper into Lebanon, seeking to blunt the offensive capability of that country's Hezbollah guerrillas. The Israeli military also resumed major air strikes after a self-imposed 48-hour pause following a bombing Sunday that killed more than 50 Lebanese civilians, many of them children, in the town of Qana.

President Bush said again Monday that he favored a cease-fire only after the goal of defusing Hezbollah's threat had been met.

Mr. Murtha, speaking yesterday at a Post-Gazette editorial board meeting, was asked if he favored a cease-fire in the campaign north of Israel's border.

"I think so," he said. "I think it would be very difficult to justify continuing on."

Referring to the Bush administration's position, he said: "You know, they say, 'Well, we want a long-term cease-fire.' It seems to me you start with a cease-fire, and then you try to work out the details long term. If you don't, and you continue to have heavy-handed military action -- and I support heavy-handed military action because it saves your own troops -- but it creates enemies, and that's the problem we have."

Mr. Murtha said the fighting risked hardening against Israel the "hearts and minds" of Lebanese civilians within the general population, beyond Israel's entrenched enemies in the Shiite militia.

Mr. Murtha offered the analogy of U.S. fighting to defeat insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falujah: That battle was a military success, he said, but the inevitable destruction it caused alienated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, turning a tactical victory into a setback for the broader strategy of trying to bring peace to Iraq.

Mr. Murtha is an outspoken critic of the administration's managing of the war in Iraq. His call late last year for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq "at the earliest practicable" moment galvanized opposition to the war among Democrats.

Earlier yesterday, Mr. Murtha's Republican challenger in the November elections, Washington County Commissioner Donna Irey, held a news conference outside the United Steelworkers Building, Downtown, at which she renewed her contention that the incumbent's anti-war statements were an affront to troops serving in Iraq.

Mr. Murtha expressed confidence in his re-election prospects, insisting that his position had been welcomed by military service members he had encountered in his district.