Tyre/Berlin: An advance contingent of an expanded UN force set up to keep the peace between Israel and Hezbollah fighters landed in south Lebanon yesterday.
Italian marines, with rifles and wearing blue UN berets, came ashore in Tyre in rubber dinghies and helicopters from the aircraft carrier Garibaldi, the flagship of the Italian fleet.
An Italian navy spokesman said some 800 had arrived off Lebanon out of a total of 3,000 troops pledged by Italy. More than 250 marines had landed by midday. They gathered at a beach hotel guarded by Lebanese soldiers and UN peacekeepers.
The Italians will make up the largest single contingent in the force, known as Unifil II, to deploy in the south after a truce halted Israel's 33-day war with Hezbollah on August 14.
The UN Security Council authorised a force of up to 15,000. France is expected to send 2,000 soldiers and Spain more than 1,000. Indonesia said it would start sending 1,000 troops over this month. Poland and Belgium have offered help too.
Mohammad Ali, one of the few Lebanese watching the Italians arrive, said the UN peacekeeping mission was meaningless.
"In the end they are all subject to UN resolutions and America uses the right of veto against UN resolutions," the 25-year-old labourer said. "Whatever Israel wants they [the Americans] are willing to do. It's a foregone conclusion."
But Siham Ahmad Al Mohammad, a shopkeeper, said the troops brought peace of mind and would deter future Israeli attacks.
"The UN troops give us some psychological assurance that the Israelis won't again attack the Lebanese people. It also improves the economy of the south," she said, watching through binoculars as the Italians came ashore.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said Israeli forces who occupied parts of the south during the war should withdraw fully as soon as 5,000 UN troops have arrived.
The French commander of Unifil, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, said he expected to have 5,000 troops in two weeks.
He already has some 2,000 troops from the old Unifil force, which has been in south Lebanon since Israel's 1978 invasion to drive PLO fighters away from the border.
Pellegrini said the new force would be different from the old Unifil, which as an observer mission had little power to dissuade Hezbollah fighters or Israeli forces from attacking. "The previous Unifil is dead. The new one is strengthened and has stronger rules of engagement," he said but added that disarming Hezbollah was not part of Unifil's mission.
Meanwhile, a German magazine reports that Germany will decide next week to commit up to 3,000 troops to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Tomorrow's edition of Focus says the upper limit of 3,000 is designed to allow maximum flexibility to the proposed German contingent, which will be restricted to sea and air troops.
The German government is due to meet tomorrow morning for an extraordinary session to discuss the country's contribution to Unifil, Focus says, without naming its sources.
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