France will not supply any meaningful amount of troops, in fact no fighting troops whatsoever, to a UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon. Jacques Chirac will only commit a token force of 200 engineering troops. Raise your hand if you did not see this one coming!
UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 17 — France has rebuffed U.N. pleas to make a major contribution to a peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, setting back international efforts to send a credible military force to the region to police a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, according to U.N. and French officials.
French President Jacques Chirac instead committed Thursday to send a relatively small military engineering company of 200 soldiers to serve in a reinforced U.N. peacekeeping mission that is expected to grow to 15,000 strong and that will help Lebanon police a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon. He also said that a force of 1,700 French troops and crew stationed in ships off the coast of Lebanon could be sent in to help the U.N. force during a crisis.
The French decision, which was first reported today in the Paris daily Le Monde, has thrown U.N. military planning into disarray on the eve of a major international meeting this afternoon of potential contributors to a U.N. force. It also seriously complicates U.N. efforts to get a vanguard force of peacekeepers from powerful European countries within the next two weeks.
Senior U.N. peacekeeping officials said they had hoped that a commitment to have French troops form the "backbone" of the U.N. peacekeeping mission would spur other countries to join.
In an earlier post I wrote:
The idea has merits. Unfortunately, it also has the French. It is about as likely as pigs to sprout wings as it would be to assume the French would actually make such a gesture to Syria much less follow through on it. The French are already expressing no interest in disarming Hezbollah. If they are unwilling to face up to the puppets, how likely are they to face the puppet masters?
You now have the answer. That would be "not at all".
And apparently so did the Germans.
Pingback: The Scratching Post
I understand every French soldier’s equipment list includes a white flag.
So much for that “robust force” we heard so much about.