Syria takes hard line against forces on its border with Lebanon

Lebanon’s prime minister, caught in a vice of conflicting demands by Israel and Syria, side-stepped Israeli insistence that international forces be deployed on the Syrian border and said today that Lebanese troops already there posed no threat to its prickly Arab neighbour.

Israel has said its air and sea blockade – imposed on Lebanon at the start of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict on July 12 – would remain in place until soldiers from an expanded UN peacekeeping force took up positions along the Lebanese-Syrian border to prevent the rearming of Hezbollah.