France is ready to take command of an enlarged United Nations force in Lebanon until February, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Wednesday.
PARIS: France is ready to take command of an enlarged United Nations force in Lebanon until February, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Wednesday.
"France has been in UNIFIL (the UN interim force in Lebanon) since 1978 and we are in command today," she said on French television channel France 2.
"We are going to continue to maintain this command, we are ready to do so until next February, including for an enlarged UNIFIL."
Her comments came after the UN Tuesday said it hoped an initial deployment of more than 3,000 troops for the strengthened force could be in place within two weeks to shore up the fragile truce between Israel and Hezbollah.
The United Nations is counting on France to deliver the backbone of the swollen peacekeeping force, designed to help the Lebanese government assert its authority over an area long dominated by the Hezbollah Shiite militia.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701, unanimously adopted Friday, gives a mandate for UNIFIL to swell from its current level of 1,990 troops to 15,000.
The Lebanese government, meanwhile, has decided to start the deployment of 15,000 of its troops in bomb-battered south Lebanon on Thursday as Israel withdraws its troops and foreign powers scramble to strengthen UNIFIL.
The French defence minister declined to say how many extra troops France would be prepared to send, and warned that the mission was not without risks due to the as yet "unclear" nature of the UN mandate.
"The question today is not how many and when, but what to do and how," the minister said.
"When a force is sent without its mission being very precise, without its means being adapted or sufficiently large, it could turn into a catastrophe, including for the troops that we send," she said.
"France is demanding more resources," Alliot-Marie said. "When a difficult mission is given to soldiers," it is necessary to "also give them the material and legal resources that go with it."
She also stressed: "It is indispensable that there be the maximum of European countries and Muslim countries' representatives" involved in the enlarged force.
"It must not be that at any moment the impression could be had that this mission is going to be one of the Western world against the Muslim world," she said.
She said that so far Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Australia have said that they were ready in principle to help make up the enlarged force.
Turkey was "considering" taking part, Alliot-Marie noted, which she said "would be a very good thing."
France, which has historical links to Lebanon, penned the UN resolution together with the US. Lebanon was ruled by a League of Nations mandate under French administration from 1920, before it became independent in 1943. 
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