NZ officer has peace to keep, at last

Clive Lilley

At the end of a trying month the New Zealand soldier who heads the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (Untso) may at last have a peace to oversee.

The shooting has petered out in southern Lebanon, where Hizbollah and Israel have just fought a fierce border war.

A UN-brokered ceasefire appears to be holding - although an Israeli commando raid into the area yesterday heightened tensions - and the UN is rushing to set up an international peacekeeping force in the region.

Major-General Clive Lilley, the Jerusalem-based Untso head of mission, is under no illusions about the difficulty of the task.

The UN has had observers in the region for 58 years and the end of its mission - which will come when Israel has peace agreements with its Arab neighbours - seems as far away as it has ever been.

"It's not that it can't be done," said General Lilley, whose two-year appointment to Jerusalem is due to end in November.

"One thing I'm learning every day about the Middle East is that timing is everything ... and of course some of the locals measure time in generations as opposed to a year or three."

As head of mission, General Lilley balances the operational command of UN soldiers with diplomatic liaison with Israeli, Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian officials.

He is also in constant contact with UN headquarters in New York, and with diplomats from nations represented on the UN Security Council.

Maintaining diplomatic dialogue in times of war is hard enough, but it became more difficult when the crisis claimed UN workers' lives.

Last month four military observers were killed when Israel bombed their patrol base in Khiyam, southern Lebanon. The attack sparked worldwide outrage and General Lilley was faced with the challenge of being diplomatic when anger must have seemed a more natural reaction.

"The Israelis put their hands up straight away and said yes, we did bomb Patrol Base Khiyam," General Lilley said.

"The actual how it occurred and why it occurred will be the subject of investigations ... but they said they did it. We don't like the outcome, certainly not, but it's not a case of letting off steam at any Israeli I come across, because that affects my impartiality and neutrality and if I lose that other people could get hurt."

General Lilley and his fellow truce observers are unarmed, despite working in one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Although being unarmed has its disadvantages, it does help a peacekeeper from being seen as a threat, General Lilley said.

But it is all too easy for a UN soldier to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. A French military observer was killed early last year, and New Zealand observer Squadron Leader Andrew Greig - one of two New Zealand UN military observers in southern Lebanon - narrowly avoided death at Khiyam when his colleagues from Austria, Canada, China, and Finland were killed.

"When people are hell-bent on fighting each other, sometimes there's just no room for a third party," General Lilley said.

"We do our business through impartiality and neutrality. As an unarmed observer, we can speak to all people at all times, in all circumstances."

New Zealanders are well-suited to such work, General Lilley says. New Zealand has no colonial past in the region, is no threat to anyone and New Zealanders are honest and do the best job they can.

But he had doubts about the wisdom of sending New Zealand troops to join a larger UN force.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has said New Zealand would be likely to play some role in any UN force, but that it would be a niche role. General Lilley said he felt New Zealand's present role was appropriate.