Enlarge imagePARIS (Reuters) - France will provide an additional 200 troops for a new United Nations force in Lebanon, French President Jacques Chirac said on Thursday, disappointing some U.N. officials who had hoped for a bigger contribution.
However, Chirac left open the possibility that France might eventually provide more soldiers and said some 1,700 French troops positioned near Lebanon would be made available to the United Nations but would not be placed under UN control.
In a statement, Chirac’s office said the president had discussed the situation with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"(Chirac) said the mission, the rules of engagement and the means at the disposal of this force still have to be decided; likewise the breakdown of the contingents which have to reflect the engagement of all the international community," it said.
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France already has some 200 troops in the existing, 2,000-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and leads the operation.
The United Nations last Friday gave the go ahead for the force numbers to rise to 15,000 troops to patrol the peace between Israel and Hizbollah. The world body wants to send up to 3,500 troops to south Lebanon within two weeks.
Chirac’s office said France was willing to carry on leading an expanded UNIFIL mission and that once the "immediate emergency" had passed, the United Nations would decide the precise make-up of the force.
French reticence to commit to UNIFIL has surprised many UN officials, who had expected Paris’s full backing for the operation after the central role French diplomats played in drawing up last week’s resolution to end fighting in Lebanon.
However, the French military is clearly unhappy about rushing into the mission following disastrous peacekeeping operations over the past three decades.
France lost 58 paratroopers in a 1983 bomb attack in Beirut and 84 soldiers during a mission to Bosnia in the early 1990s.
