UN hopes for 3,500 troops in Lebanon within 15 days

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations hopes an advance contingent of some 3,500 peacekeeping troops can be deployed to southern Lebanon in 10-15 days, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

"We would like to see 3,000 to 3,500 troops within 10 days to two weeks," Hedi Annabi, an assistant secretary-general for U.N. peacekeeping operations told reporters.

But a senior official, briefing journalists, said much depended on whether France would contribute a significant number of troops and become the backbone of the force.

"The French would like to know what others are doing and the other (countries) would like to know what France is doing," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.N. Security Council last Friday adopted a resolution authorizing up to 15,000 U.N. troops in Lebanon to help enforce an end to fighting and aid the Lebanese army in setting up a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

French military officers are meeting with peacekeeping officials on Wednesday to discuss how the mandate, set down by the Security Council, would be implemented in practice.

"We have no formal, specific commitments from troop contributors yet," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

While several European Union nations have expressed interest in contributing troops, they have not made firm commitments until France does so. In addition to the Europeans, Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia are potential troop contributors.

France is considered the likely leader of the force because it has a strong army, can deploy troops quickly and has relative credibility in the Arab world, in part because of its opposition to the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.

Some 40 nations interested in contributing soldiers to the new U.N. force are meeting today to hear the rules of engagement. While U.N. officials hope they may make firm commitments, diplomats said many ambassadors would first have to send the information to their respective governments.

The first step is to consolidate the current shaky truce and set up a phased withdrawal of some 30,000 Israeli troops as the Lebanese army deploys some of its 15,000 soldiers, with the support of UNIFIL.

The next step is to try and create a demilitarized zone between the Israeli border and the Litani river, some 13 miles (20 km) north after the Beirut government deploys its promised troops in the south, a Hizbollah stronghold.

Once the Lebanese army controls most of the south, the aim it to implement a September 2004 resolution, which calls for the disarmament of all militia, such as Hizbollah.

This is to be done by the Lebanese army, assisted by U.N. troops. But Lebanon's defense minister Elias al-Murr said the army would not disarm Hizbollah. France's foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy said his troops would not do it either.

Meanwhile the United States urged the United Nations to speed up its military planning and get more peacekeepers into southern Lebanon on an "urgent basis" rather than within months.

The United Nations must act quickly to deploy more peacekeepers to Lebanon following Friday's Security Council resolution to end the fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli forces, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

"Nobody believes that deploying the force in months is acceptable. This needs to be done on a much more urgent basis than that," he said.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told Israeli television earlier it would take weeks or months to deploy peacekeepers to beef up the current small U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

Annan, U.N. officials said, was referring to the full complement, not initial the deployment.

New York, Wednesday, Reuters