VARIOUS: Expert estimate it will take weeks before international peacekeeping force is deployed to Lebanon

Record ID: 349113

  • Title: VARIOUS: Expert estimate it will take weeks before international peacekeeping force is deployed to Lebanon
  • Date: 2nd August 2006
  • Summary: HANSJOERG STROHMEYER, CHIEF OF STAFF AT THE UN OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, WORKING IN HIS OFFICE
  • Embargoed: 17th August 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: War / Fighting,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA5P763WOF050CBEGAWODBOVAP0
  • Story Text: While heavy fighting continues to rage in southern Lebanon, civilians struggle to gather bodies and move ahead after the deadliest single air raid that killed at least 54 in the Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday (July 30). All the while politics are at a standstill and experts predict that an international peacekeeping force is still weeks away from being deployed.
    On Monday (July 31) the U.N. postponed a meeting called by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to begin planning a new peacekeeping force for Lebanon, setting back hopes for a quick end to the bloodshed.
    Major powers have said a force could not be deployed while fighting continued and without the consent of Israel, Lebanon and the Hizbollah organisation.
    The force would aim to implement a peace plan that has yet to be outlined by the 15-nation council. Only after the council has approved a mandate for the new force will countries actually decide whether they will participate.
    Lee Feinstein, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Peacekeeping expert under the Clinton administration, says that even if the force is eventually agreed upon by the international community, it could take weeks to coordinate and deploy to the region.
    "You can not muster, you can not get a 10,000 troop force in there, which is what people have been talking about, much more quickly than a couple of weeks. And that would be lightning speed."
    The U.N. Security Council approved a a 30-day extension of the mandate of the existing peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon on Monday (July 31), the 2,000-strong U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, even though the force has been largely ineffectual for many years.
    Feinstein warns that "the most important danger is going into this with an unrealistic mandate and a misapprehension about what a peacekeeping force can and should do."
    Feinstein says the mission mandate must be clearly defined as well as the troops' rules of engagement.
    Additionally, Feinstein notes that while operating unconstrained and effectively, Israel has not been able to entirely wipe out Hizbollah's infrastructure, thus he says it is not likely the international force will make any attempt to do so.
    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged major powers to patch up differences on the crisis and rescheduled a meeting of potential contributors to an international force for Thursday (August 3).
    Annan emphasized the need for coordination at a breakfast with ambassadors from the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- the Security Council members with veto power.
    The reschedule meeting among nations who may contribute troops to a stabilization force in southern Lebanon will be chaired by Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping.
    Later in the day Annan also met with Lebanon's acting foreign minister Tarek Mitri, who asked the Security Council to launch an investigation into the Qana attack on Monday (July 31).
    Diplomats have said differences remain between major powers over whether a ceasefire would precede or follow the deployment of a stabilization force, and that Israel was taking advantage of the dispute to press ahead with its offensive.
    But U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters the U.S. is working close with allies, especially France, to work on negotiating a lasting peace agreement and the creation of an international force.
    "We're working for an urgent end to the hostilities combined with a lasting political solution which that lasting cessation of hostilities would support. In short, you don't want to end up back in the same place three months form now, where you are right now, where you have a terrorist group that can drive the entire region and the rest of the world into this kind of conflict."
    In the village of Qana, United Nations aid convoys distributed aid supplies to families in the war-torn village two days after the deadly Israeli strike that killed at least 54 civilians, in the deadliest single attack in Israel's nearly three-week war against the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group.
    UN volunteers distributed food and medical supplies to villagers in need. Other rescue workers continued with the gruesome task of searching and digging up bodies from under the rubble.
    International aid agencies were hoping to distribute more aid during Israel's 48-hour air raid suspension.
    Israel announced early on Monday a partial suspension of air strikes for 48 hours and a 24-hour window for aid workers to reach the worst hit areas of for residents of south Lebanon to flee. Bombed roads and bridges have hindered access to the area.
    Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, Chief of Staff at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says some convoys still had trouble delivering aid to their destinations due to a lack of security guarantees.
    "The situation is very dire, particularly in those villages that we have not been able to access for more than two weeks now. Today is the third week of the fighting and there are still villages where a few assistance measures have taken place," said Strohmeyer.
    Stressing the need for a ceasefire so aid can be brought through to remote areas, Strohmeyer said that if a peacekeeping force is deployed he imagines it will be safer to distribute aid to those in need.
    Furthermore, Strohmeyer said funding is running out and he hopes the plea for moneys will be heard. In addition to security, another major challenge for relief workers on the ground is a severe fuel shortage.
    "Hence, my plea, we need access, we need to reach out to those areas where the elderly, those who can not travel and those who can not afford to travel are left behind without any means of survival at the moment."
    Over one hundred refugees from Qana and surrounding villages were fleeing to Sidon from their bombarded homes. Refugees are also working to make their way out of Bint Jbeil, a town in the centre of southern Lebanon. Israeli soldiers had besieged Bint Jbeil for a week, battling Hizbollah militias in what has been some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
    The United Nations estimates up to 900,000 people have been displaced by the bombing and fighting in Lebanon but many civilians are still trapped, too poor to get transport or too scared to run the gauntlet of Israeli air strikes.
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