The Associated Press August 25, 2006
Syria Threatens to Close Lebanese Border in Opposition to U.N. Forces
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The day after the French president pledged to increase the country's peacekeeping deployment to 2,000, about 150 French soldiers came ashore Friday at Naqoura in southern Lebanon. The reinforcements -- an engineering team -- already were in the pipeline to join the U.N. contingent currently on the ground.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said he called U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan late Thursday to ask again for their help in lifting Israel's air and sea blockade. Supplies again are running short in Lebanon. After a brief respite when a fuel tanker was allowed into the Beirut port, lines reappeared Friday at gasoline stations, signaling renewed shortages.
The new French force unloaded armored vehicles and bulldozers as they joined 250 of their countrymen already in Lebanon and raised to 2,200 the number of U.N. peacekeepers in the south of the country. Their mission was to serve as a buffer force between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas, who have largely kept to an Aug. 14 cease-fire brokered by the U.N.
In announcing the expanded French contribution to the peacekeeping force, designed to grow eventually to 15,000, President Jacques Chirac said he had been given assurances by the U.N. concerning the peacekeepers' mandate, but did not elaborate.
There were concerns that the forces would not be able to act robustly enough to protect themselves and to carry out their mission, which for now does not include disarming Hezbollah.
Saniora welcomed the pledge of more French forces and was in contact, his office said, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well. Saniora's Cabinet voted late Thursday to ask Germany for the technical means to help Lebanese troops patrol the country's coast and its border with Syria to prevent the rearmament of Hezbollah.
The prime minister is caught in a vice of conflicting demands by Israel and Syria. Israel has insisted international forces be deployed on the Syrian border before it lifts its air and sea blockade, while the prickly Arab neighbor has threatened to close the border if international forces take up positions there.
Syria virtually controlled Lebanon for nearly three decades before withdrawing troops last year, and as Israel conducted the 34-day war against Syrian-allied Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, the Damascus leadership stood virtually silent.
No longer. President Bashar Assad lashed out at the Israeli demand for international peacekeepers on his border with Lebanon and termed it a "hostile" move aimed at damaging relations between the neighbors. He said it was unprecedented for international forces to police a border between two countries that have not been at war.
Were U.N. soldiers to take up policing the predominantly mountainous frontier, the task could prove nearly impossible. Lebanon has two official crossings on the Syrian border in the east, at Masnaa on the Beirut-Damascus road, and one between Baalbek in Lebanon and Homs, Syria. In addition, there are two official crossings in the north.
But there are dozens of dirt tracks running between the countries through the Anti-Lebanon mountain range, routes that have been used for centuries by smugglers and many of them able to carry modern-day vehicles.
What's more, it was unclear how much in need Hezbollah was of a weapons resupply. Although Israel said Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets into the north of the country, the guerrillas were believed to have an arsenal of more than 12,000 of the weapons when the fighting started.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington think tank, has said that before the war Hezbollah was believed to have a 12,000-13,000 missile stockpile.
There has been wide speculation, as well, that the Syrian army left behind a huge weapons supply for Hezbollah as it withdrew in April 2005. Hezbollah draws primary backing from Damascus and Iran, which established the guerrilla group and its political arm in the Bekaa Valley in 1982.
Saniora's told a French television interviewer of the difficulties he now faces in trying to meet the poles-apart requirements of Israel and Syria.
"We have deployed the Lebanese army on the border (with Syria), and we have no intention of showing any hostility toward Syria. We want cordial relations with Syria and we are taking care of the issue of the border to prevent any infiltration into Lebanon," Saniora said.
After the Thursday night Cabinet meeting, the government affirmed its determination to uphold the cease-fire and called on the international community to send forces to free up the Lebanse army to patrol its borders. Information Minister Ghazi Aridi issued a statement that did not directly address the issue of U.N. troops on the Syrian border.
Although Aridi implied that Lebanon would not ask for the deployment of international forces to that frontier, he said the government would ask help from Germany with equipment to control the border.
"The Security Council resolution allows the Lebanese government to ask the world community for help in any way to enable it to exercise its full sovereignty over land and sea borders," he said.
"And the Cabinet directed Prime Minister Saniora to ask German Chancellor Merkel to supply Lebanon's army with the equipment and technology necessary to enable Lebanon to secure its land and sea borders," Aridi said.
The Lebanese president added his voice to the issue Thursday, also calling on Annan to force Israel to lift its blockade as called for in the U.N.-brokered cease-fire.
"Eleven days after Resolution 1701 went into effect, Israel's aggressive acts against Lebanon have not stopped yet," President Emile Lahoud said in a statement released by his office.
"Israeli forces are still occupying Lebanese territory in the south. The (Israeli) land, sea and air blockade is still imposed on Lebanon. All follow-ups made by the Lebanese state did not yield any results, while we hear conditions from here and there infringing on Lebanese sovereignty and harming independence and freedom of decision-making which Lebanon cannot accept," he added.
Four days after the cease-fire went into effect, the Lebanese army began setting up checkpoints near dozens of illegal border crossings with Syria in a bid to help prevent arms smuggling as well as the movement of people and goods, a Lebanese military official said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details on troop placement. He said the army plan covers an estimated 60 illegal border crossings with Syria in northern and eastern Lebanon.
U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said Sunday that 2,000 Lebanese soldiers have been deployed so far along Lebanon's eastern border near Syria with the goal of eventually having 8,600 along the border. Some 1,000 Lebanese soldiers also have been deployed along Lebanon's coastline, he said.
The international community has been slow to come together in volunteering troops for the U.N.-mandated force. European Union foreign ministers were taking up the issue in Brussels on Friday under heavy pressure to move quickly to get at least a vanguard of the expanded force on the ground next week.
Geneva-based representatives of aid agencies expressed concern over the growing dispute surrounding the Lebanon-Syria border, but refused to comment directly on Syria's apparent threat to seal the frontier if international troops were deployed along it.
On Wednesday Finland's foreign minister, Erkki Tuomioja, came out of a meeting with his Syrian counterpart and said Damascus threatened to close the border if that happened.
© Copyright 2006, The Associated Press
