Countries interested in participating in an international force for Lebanon are to gather at UN headquarters on Monday to begin planning, UN and diplomatic sources said today.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the meeting and will act as chairman, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to preempt the UN leader's announcement. The goal is to begin discussions on the type of force to deploy, its goals and rules of engagement.
Annan asked the UN peacekeeping department earlier this week to organize the meeting in anticipation of Security Council approval of such a force, the sources said. Many potential troop contributing countries have been invited but the sources declined to identify them.
US State Department official, Nicholas Burns, would represent the United States, the sources said. However, Washington has ruled out contributing troops to the force.
"We believe strongly that there is broad international interest in doing this and that certainly there will be sufficient numbers of contributions available to make that force be a viable, robust force," US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington.
Casey said the mission could be authorized by the Security Council but would not have to be a blue-hatted UN force. "The decisions are yet to come as to whether it wears a blue helmet, whether it wears a NATO flag, whether it wears some other kind of multinational force emblem on it. The thing that it is important is that we get the right troops in place as quickly as possible to do the job," Casey said.
Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said European Union countries "will be providing the biggest share in any such force in its capabilities and personnel."
France could end up taking command, said Tuomioja, whose government currently holds the rotating EU presidency. "But it cannot be purely an EU operation, it has to be a general or multinational force."
Some diplomats believe the session may be premature. "They want to move forward with a force before there is agreement on a political settlement of the conflict. I don't know if that is going to work," said one diplomat whose government was considering offering troops.
Major powers have said a force could not be deployed while fighting continued and without the consent of Israel, Lebanon and the Hizbollah organisation.
An international conference in Rome on Wednesday failed to reach agreement on how and when the end the fighting but did agree on the need for an international military force with a UN Security Council mandate to secure the Israeli-Lebanese border