The United States resisted calls for an early cease-fire in last summer's Israel-Lebanon war in order to give Israel time to defeat Hezbollah, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said.

The demand for an immediate cease-fire - backed by much of the international community but ignored for weeks by the United States and Britain - had been dangerous and misguided, John Bolton said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview aired Thursday.

Bolton agreed with the assertion that the U.S. had given Israel free rein in its fight against Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.

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"What was wrong with that?" Bolton said. "They had been attacked, they were responding. The fact was that Israel was subject to a military threat from Hezbollah on a continuous basis."

"Hezbollah had committed an act of aggression and Israel was reacting in its own self-defense. And if reacting in its own self defense meant the defeat of the enemy, that was perfectly legitimate, under international law and frankly under good politics."

The United States eventually backed diplomatic moves for a cease-fire and the deployment of international peacekeepers to end the 34-day conflict.

Up to about 1,200 people were killed in Lebanon during the fighting, according to tallies by government agencies, humanitarian groups and The Associated Press. Most were Lebanese civilians.

A total of 159 Israelis - 120 soldiers and 39 civilians - were also killed in Hezbollah clashes with Israeli troops and by Hezbollah rockets lobbed into Israel.Israel failed to achieve its main goals - destroying Hezbollah and returning Israel Defense Forces soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose July 12 capture by the guerrillas sparked the conflict.

Bolton, who stepped down from his UN post in December, said he was "damned proud of what we did."

Bolton was interviewed for a BBC radio documentary on the war to be broadcast in full next month.

The former ambassador, who has a reputation as a blunt-spoken hawk, is writing a book about his days at the UN titled "Surrender is Not an Option."

British Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells said Bolton's remarks came as a surprise.

"I certainly didn't get the sense that there was some sort of formal collusion between the Americans and the Israelis," he told the BBC.