Enlarge imageBy Crispian Balmer
PARIS (Reuters) - France will initially provide only 200 extra troops for a new United Nations force in Lebanon, President Jacques Chirac said on Thursday, disappointing some U.N. officials who had hoped for a contribution of thousands.
Such a move could seriously delay the U.N. mission, seen as vital to securing peace between Israel and Hizbollah after a month-long war, or even scupper the operation.
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 U.N. control.
France’s reticence follows disastrous peacekeeping operations over the past three decades, with its military losing 58 paratroopers in a 1983 bomb attack in Beirut and some 84 soldiers during a mission to Bosnia in the early 1990s.
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In a statement, Chirac’s office said he had discussed the situation with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. It added that Chirac was expressing the content of a proposal that France would submit to a meeting in New York on the U.N. force.
"(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.
France already has some 200 troops in the existing, 2,000-strong U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and leads the operation.
"(Chirac) announced to (Annan) that France was prepared to maintain its naval and air force presence off Lebanon," the statement said, adding that that presence comprised 1,700 men.
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.
READY TO KEEP LEADING
Many diplomats had expected France to provide at least 2,000 men. Italy has said it is ready to send between 2,000 and 3,000 troops to Lebanon but has also said it is waiting for the U.N. to clarify the new force’s rules of engagement.
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 U.N. 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.
During negotiations on Friday’s Security Council resolution, France insisted the force be under U.N. control as Lebanon had demanded, while the United States preferred a multinational operation separate from the United Nations.
(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy and Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Silvia Aloisi in Rome and Evelyn Leopold and Irwin Arieff at the United Nations)
