EU gathers to stiffen resolve on peace force

PARIS - The European Union and the United Nations will today seek to cut through uncertainty and hesitation that have clouded prospects for restoring peace to southern Lebanon.

In an extraordinary meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers will tell UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan how far they are willing to commit to a prospective force of 15,000 UN troops which will separate Israel and the Hizbollah militia.

The unit - a beefed-up version of the present UN force in Lebanon - is the centrepiece of the Security Council's August 11 resolution which called for a ceasefire in the month-long war that killed at least 1287 Lebanese and 161 Israelis.

As architect of the UN resolution, France had been expected to take the lead role in the force, which was to have become operational next week with a vanguard of 3500 troops.

But France seems to have developed cold feet. It has committed only 200 troops and said further pledges would depend on UN agreement on giving the force clear lines of command and clear rules of engagement.

Italy, prodded by the UN, the United States and Britain, then stepped into the breach, saying it would take over the leadership and provide about 3000 troops.

But, as it lifted the pressure on its EU partners to also show willing, it insisted on a new Security Council resolution to define the peacekeepers' role.

Other EU countries have been silent or have pledged token forces or units that would be almost useless.

The Scandinavian countries, for instance, have offered warships to patrol the Mediterranean at the border area, but as Italian Defence Minister Arturo Parisi said, what is needed are "boots on the ground".

At home, though, keeping Italian public opinion on side for what could be a prolonged foreign military intervention may prove difficult.

Military sources in Italy are questioning the Government's wisdom in withdrawing troops from the Iraq quagmire while committing them to the tinder box of southern Lebanon.

Hundreds of thousands of Italians turned out in rallies to oppose the Iraq war and the anti-war feeling swelled after 19 Italian troops died in an attack in southern Iraq in November 2003.

There seems little appetite for a repeat of the scenes of flag-draped coffins being brought home.

The German Government is reluctant to send troops, reportedly because of the risk of confrontation with the Israelis - the notion of a German soldier shooting a Jew remains a potent taboo, 61 years after World War II.

What weighs heavily on European minds is the wretched failure of UN peacekeeping missions to Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s.

France lost 84 soldiers in the Balkans between 1992 and 1994.

So Europeans have many questions about the UN force's task. They include whether it will be required to stop Hizbollah from resupplying itself with weapons and munitions, and whether the troops can fire back when under threat, not just in self-defence.

"The UN needs to give strong and robust conditions," said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, at a meeting of EU ambassadors and military experts in Brussels yesterday.

"Military people are not going to recommend going there if there is not any clarity."

Italy has demanded guarantees that the UN troops will not be attacked by Israel. Four troops in the present 2000-member force were killed in an Israeli airstrike last month that the UN has said was "apparently deliberate".

The EU-UN meeting will be followed by a meeting of EU ministers and then by a summit in Paris between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Jacques Chirac.

Today's is about co-ordination and national pledges, "not about putting together a European force" as such, an EU source said.

"Rather, the idea is to show European solidarity, to show that Lebanon concerns everybody."

Those words highlight the problems facing the 25-nation EU over its goal of having a single foreign and security policy.

"One could see this as an opportunity for the EU to act, but the whole runup to the war shows Europe's weakness in security and defence matters," said Jan Joel Andersson, programme director at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.

"When things heat up, the countries act according to their own interests and the European unity quickly falls apart."

Diplomats are now quietly scaling down expectations of the size of the UN force. Two potential contributors, Britain and the United States, are out because of military overstretch and their political backing for Israel.

Other wealthy countries fear getting bogged down for years in a bloody quagmire.