|
US rules out troops in Lebanon
THE United States says it will not contribute troops to a possible international force in Lebanon, as world powers weigh the precise mandate and design of a proposed peacekeeping mission there.To defuse an escalating crisis, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others have called for a "robust" force much larger than the 2,000-strong UN observer mission already in Lebanon. Whatever force takes shape, Washington made clear that US troops will not be on the ground. "We are looking at what kind of international assistance force makes sense, but I do not think that it is anticipated that US ground forces are expected for that force," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday. Rice said she had spoken with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan about a possible multinational force and discussions were underway with US allies to resolve key issues. "The questions about what kind of force it is, what its command structure is, is it a UN force, is it an international assistance force, those are the discussions that are going on and I think are going to go on over the next few days," Rice said. Any UN or international force would have to be strong enough to prevent the Shi'ite Hizbollah militia from operating out of southern Lebanon, she said. "That's going to take a robust force." An Israeli offensive against the militant Shi'ite group Hizbollah, launched in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, has left more than 352 people dead in 11 days. Former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer has said it would make "little sense" to deploy a bigger UN force in Lebanon to stabilise the country. "Another blue-helmet mandate will make little sense. Only a robust force with a robust mandate could perhaps achieve something positive. But the risks are enormous," Fischer recently told Die Zeit newspaper. In New York, the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said talks on a stabilisation force had to address "broad questions" about the contingent's authority to confront and disarm Hizbollah, as well as its relationship to the existing UN mission and the Lebanese government. Bolton warned against creating a new mission that would simply add a new layer of UN bureaucracy in the region. "And while hardly an interim force, it is reasonable and responsible to ask how a new force would differ from and be more effective than UNIFIL (the UN Interim Force in Lebanon)," Bolton said. Posted by: tipper 2006-07-22 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=160494 |