Peacekeepers bring calm to south Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Three months into their mission of enforcing a cease-fire, U.N. peacekeepers have succeeded so far in keeping the peace at an Israeli-Lebanon border that previously had been a Mideast flashpoint for decades.

No shooting incidents have been reported across the international border since the force, called the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, began beefing up with the arrival of French forces Aug. 19, shortly after a U.N. cease-fire ended this summer's Israeli-Hezbollah war.

But the peacekeepers' mission remains far from complete: Israel's warplanes continue to fly over Lebanon, and Israeli troops hold a divided border village.

Perhaps most troubling to the world community, the militant group Hezbollah has so far kept its weapons, albeit hidden.

That raises troubling issues as Lebanon faces a political crisis that could plunge it into greater instability and violence.

Nevertheless, the period since the cease-fire has been "one of the longest periods of calm" on the border, Milos Strugar, senior U.N. official, said in a recent interview.

Despite the successes, the peacekeepers have had to worry about their own safety in an increasingly turbulent Lebanon.

The political instability in Beirut, where the government is divided between a pro-Syrian Hezbollah camp and an anti-Syrian U.S.-backed camp, could affect the troops' long-term mission, which is to help Lebanon's government spread its authority throughout the country.

The latest violence - the assassination of a prominent Christian cabinet minister - already has plunged the country into even more uncertainty.

The force of just under 10,000 peacekeepers patrols alongside an estimated 17,000 Lebanese soldiers in the buffer zone between the Lebanese-Israeli border and the Litani River, which is 18 miles away at its farthest point.

The force is mandated to go up to a maximum of 15,000. The smallest contributor, Luxembourg, has two engineers, and the largest, Italy, has over 2,000 soldiers.

The Lebanese army's deployment in the buffer zone, for the first time in three decades, is one of the positive developments Strugar cites since war's end, along with a buffer zone largely free of visible unauthorized weapons.

Hezbollah, the guerrilla group that fought Israeli forces, so far has hidden its guns and pledged cooperation in the south, even as it has fought a bitter political battle in Beirut.

In the past, a smaller UNIFIL force regularly encountered guerrillas attempting to attack Israel, but UNIFIL and the Lebanese army "have not encountered any Hezbollah armed personnel in the area, nor detected any hostile action" since fighting ended, peacekeepers said in a statement last week.

Since September, UNFIL has reported seven instances where its units have discovered unauthorized arms or related materials and informed the Lebanese army, which took action to either confiscate or destroy the weapons.

Most significant were two seizures of the guerrillas' favorite weapons - Katyusha rockets like those that rained on northern Israeli towns during the fighting and improvised explosive devices that have been used against Israeli armor. The areas where they were found are known as hideouts of radical Syrian-backed Palestinian guerrillas, and not of Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has said it possesses over 30,000 rockets and most are believed to be Katyushas.

The seizures, though small, show that UNIFIL and the Lebanese army will not tolerate unauthorized weapons - meaning Hezbollah, which previously ruled south Lebanon unopposed for years, is forced to hide its weapons.

Nevertheless, Israel has insisted that more should be done. It calls its Lebanese overflights necessary to monitor the situation, but both UNIFIL and Lebanon have called them violations of the U.N.-demarcated border.

On two occasions, French peacekeepers came close to firing on Israeli aircraft overflying Lebanon, believing the planes were preparing to attack. "Our troops barely avoided a catastrophe," French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said after the first incident.

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