Peace force dogged by difficulties

At least 15 countries are considering sending troops to an eventual United Nations-mandated international “stabilisation force” in southern Lebanon - including Malaysia, Indonesia and Norway.

But scores of others – skittish about a potential Middle East quagmire or already stretched thin elsewhere, such as the US and Britain – have ruled out sending soldiers.

And over the whole enterprise hangs a huge Catch-22: Israel refuses to leave until the force is in place and nations will not go in until a ceasefire is in effect.

“We do not want foreign troops to commit suicide by entering Lebanon under the current situation,” said Syed Hamid Albar, the foreign minister of Malaysia, which has 1,000 soldiers on standby.

That accounts for the wait-and-see approach adopted by many nations. Diplomats are preoccupied with pushing through a UN resolution aimed at ending nearly a month of fighting before they tackle the question of a multinational force.

The 15 countries willing in principle to deploy forces – provided they get a strong UN mandate with clear rules of engagement – are Australia; Brazil; Chile; France; Ghana; Indonesia; Italy; Lithuania; Malaysia; Nigeria; Norway; Portugal; Romania; Spain; and Turkey.

In addition, Poland, which already has 200 soldiers serving as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, has said it is inclined to keep them there.

Three of the 15 have offered specifics of what they are ready to commit: Malaysia, which says its 1,000-strong contingent would be backed by armoured vehicles; Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, which has offered a battalion of about 800 men; and Norway, which has pledged a squadron of nearly 100 marines and four missile torpedo boats.

Sizeable troop contributions could come from Italy, which last month promised a “substantial contribution”; Turkey, which has experience leading UN peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan and Somalia; and France, which already has about 1,300 personnel and several frigates in the area.

Speculation on who might command a multinational force in southern Lebanon has centred on Turkey and France.

But a daunting tangle of potential complications threatens to bedevil the international effort even before it gets under way.

Among the more striking examples is Germany. It has not ruled out contributing troops, but its leaders – mindful of the country’s Nazi past – are anxious to avoid any scenario in which German soldiers could wind up in conflict with Israelis.

And there are plenty of other thorny issues.

Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has said his country would stop its offensive only after the deployment of a robust international force – “an army with combat units” ready and willing to rein in Hezbollah.

That raises the question of whether the Europeans and others are prepared for a campaign that could go beyond peacekeeping and firing weapons purely in self-defence to the potentially bloody business of engaging and disarming Hezbollah militants.

With Hezbollah mixed among civilians, that involves a very high risk that the force would cause civilian casualties.

Some military analysts have raised the possibility that Hezbollah, if forced back by international troops, could simply lob its rockets over their heads and keep hitting targets in northern Israel. If Israel wanted to strike back by ground assault, it would presumably be up to the force to stop it.

Cyprus, which was a hub for last month’s evacuations of foreigners from Lebanon, has been mentioned as a possible staging point for international troops. But Turkey, which does not recognise the island’s Greek-led government, would be restricted to using Cyprus’ northern, ethnically Turkish part.