Hundreds of Italian troops landed in southern Lebanon today, the advance party of Italy's contingent in a UN force expanded to keep the peace between Israel and Hizbullah guerrillas.
Major-General Alain Pellegrini
The Italians will make up the largest contingent in the new Lebanon force, which will deploy along the Israeli-Lebanese border after a one-month war between Israel and Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim guerrilla movement.
Around 150 Italian marines wearing blue berets arrived aboard a wave of gray UN helicopters in the Mediterranean port city of Tyre to secure two beaches where the remainder of an 880-strong battalion of soldiers will land over the weekend.
Italy has pledged to send 3,000, which will be the biggest contingent in the new UN force, known as Unifil II. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said Israeli forces who moved into south Lebanon during the war with Hizbullah should withdraw fully as soon as 5,000 UN troops have arrived.
The French commander of Unifil, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, told reporters in Tyre he expected to have the 5,000 troops on the ground within two weeks and said the expanded force would have greater powers to enforce the truce.
"Everyone should forget about the old Unifil. The previous Unifil is dead. The new one is strengthened and has stronger rules of engagement," he said.
The truce has so far held with few violations other than flights over Lebanon by Israeli planes, defying widespread expectations of intermittent violence.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan held talks in Iran today to seek help in shoring up a Hizbullah-Israel ceasefire and other issues that diplomats said would include Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.
Mr Annan arrived in the Iranian capital two days after the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported Tehran had failed to meet the U.N. Security Council's Aug. 31 deadline to halt uranium enrichment.
"I am here to discuss implementation of resolution 1701, which deals with the situation in Lebanon, and I will also discuss issues of concern in this region to the international community," Annan told reporters shortly before heading into talks with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Iran is one of the main backers of Hizbullah, and Mr Annan is expected to urge a commitment to a ban on exporting arms to the guerrillas as demanded by the UN Security Council resolution that ushered in the August 14th truce.
Annan may also seek to enlist Iran's help in securing the release of two Israeli soldiers seized on July 12th in a cross-border raid by Hizbullah.
That raid sparked the war that killed more than 1,300 people, mostly Lebanese civilians.
Although Iran funded and armed Hizbullah in the 1980s, it now says its support is primarily moral and political.