The ANNOTICO
Report
With France stepping back and offering only 200
troops, Italy
steps up and offers 2,000, and take a lead position.
Hate to see
Italians putting themselves "in harms way", in SUCH a volatile
situation, but it is an opportunity to take "center stage" and immeasurably enhance their world wide
prestige.
There is one
strange issue. Italy's Right wing government sent troops to Iraq
to be in the middle of a Deadly Military action. Yet, Now, the Right are objecting to a Peace Keeping Mission
????? Somebody help me on this one!! :)
ITALY OFFERS TO LEAD U.N. FORCE IN LEBANON
Reuters
By Gideon Long
August 22, 2006
BEIRUT - Italian Prime Minister
Romano Prodi said on Monday his country was ready to
lead a U.N. force in southern Lebanon,
where the fragility of a week-old truce was underlined when Israeli forces
fired at Hizbollah guerrillas.
"I confirmed
the Italian willingness (to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan)," Prodi told
reporters, adding that Annan would make a final
decision on the command of the force this weekend.
The Lebanese
government welcomed Italy's offer of 2,000 troops, the biggest commitment any
country has made yet. Israel
has already said it would be happy if Italy led the force.
Italy's right-wing opposition
warned the deployment could prove a "kamikaze" mission.
U.S. President
George W. Bush called earlier for the urgent dispatch of U.N. peacekeepers to
south Lebanon to help
enforce the truce, which halted 34 days of fighting in which nearly 1,200
people in Lebanon
and 157 Israelis were killed.
Turkey, Spain
and other countries are still hesitating over whether to send contingents after
France,
previously tipped to lead the force, sharply reduced its anticipated
contribution.
"The
international community must now designate the leadership of this international
force, give it robust rules of engagement and deploy it as quickly as possible
to secure the peace," Bush told a news conference in Washington.
Bush also
announced a $230 million aid package to Lebanon that includes 25,000 tonnes of wheat.
In a sign of the
truce's shakiness, Israel said its troops shot and wounded three Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon. It said the guerrillas had
been approaching the Israeli troops in a "threatening way".
The U.N.-brokered
truce has already been jolted by an Israeli commando raid in eastern Lebanon's
Bekaa
Valley on Saturday that
the United Nations described as a violation.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John
Bolton, said the United States
wanted a new U.N. Security Council resolution on disarming Hizbollah
but that this should not hold up the quick dispatch of U.N. troops to Lebanon.
U.N. FORCE
The United
Nations has vowed to move 3,500 extra troops to the south by Sept. 2 but has
received few firm offers of help to build the force to its authorised
strength of 15,000.
Bolton said countries wanted to
be sure troops would have the maximum authority to defend themselves.
"That is one of the reasons why we and others sought a very robust mandate
for the force, and why this may still remain to be worked out," he said.
France had been expected to lead the mission but
then dismayed the United Nations by offering only 200 troops to add to those it
already has in the existing 2,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, a
former French colony.
Bush urged France to
increase its contribution. "I would hope that they would put more troops
in," he said. "France
has had a very close relationship with Lebanon."
The Lebanese army
has deployed along the Syrian border and has moved deep into the shattered
south, but Israel
says its troops will not pull out fully until extra U.N. forces arrive.
U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said after
talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and senior Olmert aides he
hoped Israel would end its
air and sea blockade of Lebanon
as Lebanese authorities take full control of the borders.
He said he saw
"reason for optimism" that all parties would fully respect the truce.
The Israeli
government came under further fire at home for its handling of the war, which
failed to destroy Hizbollah or secure the release of
two soldiers whose capture by Hizbollah in a
cross-border raid on July 12 sparked the conflict.
Israeli
reservists vented their anger at politicians and army officers for
indecisiveness and other perceived failures.
"The
government didn't take seriously the
lives of our troops," said Zvi Marek, a reserve infantry soldier at a demonstration in Jerusalem.
In addition, Israeli
Brigadier-General Yossi Heiman
said the military had been guilty of arrogance in its approach.
In a sign that
life is gradually returning to normal in Beirut,
the Lebanese stock exchange lifted restrictions brought in during the war to
limit price volatility. Trade was brisk and the benchmark BLOM Stock Index rose
5.8 percent.
The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad
bin Khalifa al-Thani,
became the first head of state to visit Lebanon since the war. Lebanese
officials have said Qatar
has offered to rebuild devastated villages in the south.
(Additional
reporting by Reuters bureaux in Washington,
Berlin, Beirut,
Jerusalem and Rome)