La placinte inainte, la razboi inapoi!

U.S. and NATO Balk on Troops for Lebanon Force
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: July 25, 2006

PARIS, July 24 — Support is building quickly for an international military force to be placed in southern Lebanon, but there remains a small problem: where will the troops come from?

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The United States has ruled out its soldiers’ participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development.
“All the politicians are saying, ‘Great, great’ to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground,” said one senior European official. “Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus.”

There has been strong verbal support for such a force in public, but also private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between them and the Israelis.
There is also the burden of history. France — which has called the idea of a force premature — and the United States are haunted by their last participation in a multinational force in Lebanon, after the Israeli invasion in 1982, when they became belligerents in the Lebanese civil war and tangled fatally with Hezbollah.
They withdrew in defeat after Hezbollah’s suicide bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, which killed 241 American service members and 58 French paratroopers.

Israel’s own public position toward an international force has been welcoming, but skeptical, insisting that it be capable of military missions, not just peacekeeping.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested that the force could be made up of soldiers from both European and Arab states, while his defense minister, Amir Peretz, spoke of soldiers from NATO countries.
But Israel senses no great willingness among leading European countries to take part, and Israeli officials emphasize that they will not accept an end to hostilities until clear policy goals are met.
For the moment, at least, Israel is laying out an ambitious, if perhaps unrealistic, view of what the force would do. Israel wants it to keep Hezbollah away from the border, allow the Lebanese government and army to take control over all of its territory, and monitor Lebanon’s borders to ensure that Hezbollah is not resupplied with weapons.
Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, laid out the goals in a meeting on Sunday with senior officials of the British, German and French governments. Ms. Livni told them that Israel’s goal was to disarm Hezbollah and that either the Israeli Army or an international force would have to do it, said officials from those four countries who were familiar with the discussion at the meeting.

By contrast, the Europeans, including Britain, France and Germany, envision a much less robust international buffer force, one that would follow a cease-fire and operate with the consent of the Lebanese government in southern Lebanon.

Such a situation would mean that Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government, would be part of a decision that led to its own disarming and the protection of Israel, which the Europeans see as far-fetched.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who began a trip to the region on Monday with a quick first stop in Beirut, will hold an international meeting on the crisis in Rome on Wednesday, when a multinational force will be a prime topic. But she has already ruled out the participation of American troops.

On Monday, Germany’s defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, said Berlin would be willing to participate if both Israel and Hezbollah requested German participation and if certain tough conditions were met. These include a cease-fire and the release of the captured Israeli soldiers.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said he hoped a plan, including an international force, a mutual cease-fire and the release of the captured soldiers, could be negotiated and announced in the next few days.
“If someone’s got a better plan, I’d like to hear it,” he said.
But Britain has also made clear in private diplomatic exchanges that with thousands of its troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, it could not be counted on to send troops into still another theater.
As for France, which already has troops in Lebanon as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force known as Unifil, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy left his meetings with Israeli leaders on Sunday convinced that the idea of a new international force for Lebanon was “premature,” French officials said.

The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Monday in Brussels that an international force would not be “an easy force to deploy,” but added that talks were under way about such a force under a United Nations Security Council mandate.
“I think several member states of the European Union will be ready to provide all necessary assistance,” he said, but did not name the countries.
Mr. Solana is said to be wary of a NATO-led force, another senior European Union official said. “NATO is too identified with the United States,” the official said. “It would be Iraq all over again.”
At NATO headquarters, officials said they were taken by surprise by comments of Israeli officials that they would welcome a NATO-led force to secure their border.
“No request has been made to NATO,” said James Appathurai, a NATO spokesman. “The possibility, the shape, the structure of any international force — none of them has been seriously addressed.”
In an ambitious new mission, NATO is scheduled to take over military operations from the American-led coalition in Afghanistan at the end of the month.

The challenge of creating a viable international force to secure Israel’s border with Lebanon was captured by Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The European foreign ministers were enthusiastic, he said.
“They only had one small condition — for the force to be made up of soldiers from another country,” Mr. Barnea wrote. “The Germans recommended France; the French recommended Egypt, and so on. It is doubtful whether there is a single country in the West currently volunteering to lay down its soldiers on Hezbollah’s fence.”
Elaine Sciolino reported from Paris for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Jerusalem. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.