MIDDLE EAST: Italian prime minister Romano Prodi yesterday offered to lead a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. He said he spoke to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
"I confirmed the Italian willingness. He [Mr Annan] will decide about the command [of the forces]." He said the secretary-general would make his decision by this weekend.
After a weekend of hectic international diplomacy, Italy has emerged as the probable leader of a UN peace mission which will have the difficult task of shoring up the truce between Israel and Hizbullah, a truce that ended 34 days of fighting in which 157 Israelis and an estimated 1,200 Lebanese were killed.
Key to the probable Italian leadership of the UN force were weekend telephone talks between Italian prime minister Romano Prodi and his Israeli and Lebanese counterparts, Ehud Olmert and Fouad Siniora . Government sources yesterday emphasised that both the Israeli and Lebanese prime ministers had approved the idea of a mission in which Italy played a prominent role.
Rome received further encouragement over the weekend when US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice rang Italian foreign minister Massimo D'Alema, urging Italy to "assume a prominent role".
Italy had emerged as the country most likely to lead the force in the wake of the apparent reluctance of France, which already has 200 troops in the 2,000-strong Unifil force in Lebanon. France had been expected to assume leadership but has offered only another 200 troops. In contrast, Italy may be willing to send between 2,500 and 3,000.
Mr Prodi had said that Italy was ready to play its part but made participation dependent on the definition of clear rules of engagement for the force. He said Italy was "not going to Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah" but rather to help both Israeli and Lebanese army forces oversee the ceasefire.
In that context, Italian government sources yesterday welcomed the announcement by US president George Bush that there will shortly be another UN resolution, dealing specifically with the rules of engagement in Lebanon. Mr Bush also called for the "urgent deployment" of the UN peacekeeping force.
Further details of the peacekeeping mission may be hammered out at a meeting of senior EU diplomats in Brussels tomorrow.
The diplomats will sound out the 25 EU member states about their willingness to contribute to the force while at the same time considering the options of making the mission French-led, Italian-led or jointly led by the French and Italians.
While the Italian government, in the words of agriculture minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, believes that "a peace mission in Lebanon has an ethical value and is in the national interest", not everyone agrees. Senior opposition figure Francesco Storace of Alleanza Nazionale warned against such a mission, saying: "Chirac will send the odd general, Germany a few motor boats while we will be sending kamikaze troops, dressed up in the tricolour."