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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (11011)	8/17/2006 9:39:05 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The cowardly UNIFIL force that allowed Hezbollah to fire rockets from adjacent to their posts was headed by a French officer. More French military are not the answer to anything positive. BTW - nice grub.

To: haqihana who wrote (11011)	8/17/2006 10:09:56 AM
From: Geoff Altman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Previously when I heard France had agreed with the US to serve as the core of the peace keeping force and to disarm hez I thought, gee, maybe the French aren't so worthless after all. All it took was a 10 second call from Siniora to Chirac to make the French give up disarming hez. Then I realized why France agreed, rather quickly, with sending their troops.......reconstruction business. That's why they're there and that's why the French will readily concede to virtually anything the Lebanese or hez want. No worries, this cease fire will most likely go away by Aug 22. The Israelis will have a no confidence vote and replace Olmert with someone with military experience then they'll go back into Lebanon with a much larger force.

To: haqihana who wrote (11011)	8/21/2006 5:12:42 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Mission Unaccomplished The French promise a military force and Condi falls for it. Monday, August 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT Most U.N. resolutions don't have the shelf-life of a gallon of milk, which isn't always a bad thing. But in the case of Resolution 1701--the cease-fire agreement for Lebanon and Israel adopted unanimously this month by the Security Council--things seem to be going sour even faster than that. And that is cause for serious unease. On Thursday, Jacques Chirac confirmed a Le Monde report that his government was prepared to offer only some 200 combat engineers (in addition to the 200 French troops already in Lebanon) to what is supposed to be the resolution's centerpiece: A 15,000-man U.N. force that will help the Lebanese army patrol their southern border and ensure that Hezbollah will no longer use the area as a staging ground for future attacks against Israel. Given that the French contingent was supposed to be at the vanguard of this enhanced force, it's unclear whether other nations will be willing to chip in with troops of their own. All of this after the French used the promise of a robust, French-led international force to get the U.S. and Israel to agree to a cease-fire and withdrawal. Even less reassuring is the insistence by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie that her troops will remain in the lead only until February, after which, apparently, it's salaam and adieu. Then there is the delicate matter of disarming Hezbollah. Although the terrorist militia is so far abiding by the cease-fire, its leader Hassan Nasrallah made a televised statement last week insisting it was the "wrong time" to discuss disarmament. "Who will defend Lebanon in case of a new Israeli offensive?" he asks. The answer, presumably, is the Lebanese Army. By the terms of the 1989 Taif Accord that ended Lebanon's civil war, all domestic Lebanese militias should have long since disarmed or been folded into the regular army. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 of 2004 makes the same demand, as does 1701. But the U.N. resolutions are dismayingly vague about just who, other than Hezbollah itself, is supposed to do the disarming. "I don't think there is an expectation that this [U.N.] force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told USA Today last week. "You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of a militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily." That's some "hope" on Secretary Rice's part. Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian Lebanese President who is nominally commander-in-chief of the army, has described the notion of disarming Hezbollah as "disgraceful": "How can they ask us to disarm while the blood of the martyrs is still warm?" Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has been less explicit but little better. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that he has entered into negotiations with Mr. Nasrallah to arrange a modus vivendi between Lebanese troops and Hezbollah fighters still operating in the south of Lebanon. Resolution 1701 also calls for an arms embargo on Hezbollah, although it specifies no penalties for those who break it. Anyone who has visited the remote, unguarded and unmarked hinterland between Syria and Lebanon must know that such an embargo will be very hard to enforce. All of this explains Israel's increasing frustration with the cease-fire. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought into the agreement based on what now appear to have been insincere pledges that European troops would dominate the U.N. force. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is displaying his trademark even-handedness by denouncing Israel for trying to enforce the arms embargo while staying silent on the failure of everyone else to enforce it. Israel can and will defend itself. The person who should really be furious here is Secretary of State Rice. She midwifed this cease-fire in the name of Lebanese democracy and as a way to use diplomacy, and the U.N., to tame Hezbollah and frustrate its patrons. She also believed French promises, so it'd be good to know if she now feels she was lied to. If this U.N. exercise turns out to be as feckless as it increasingly appears, U.S. credibility will also be a loser. opinionjournal.com