ROME, 10 September 2006 — Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said yesterday that Syria’s President Bashar Assad has agreed “in principle” to a European Union presence on its border to help stem the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
Bashar said last month that he would consider the deployment of international troops along the Lebanon-Syria border to be a hostile move toward his country.
Prodi said in a statement that details of a proposal were being worked out and would be presented at a meeting of the EU’s foreign affairs committee on Thursday in Brussels.
He said he had spoken with Bashar several times over the last few days. “I reminded President Assad that the European Union has significant experience in training programs for frontier guards, and that the idea of an EU mission of assistance on the border between Syria and Lebanon would be an excellent signal of cooperation between Syria and Europe,” Prodi’s statement said. “President Assad gave me his accord in principle.”
In comments to the ANSA news agency, confirmed by Prodi’s office, the premier said the European guards would not be armed and would not be in uniform, but would have all the “necessary instruments to check on the passage of arms toward southern Lebanon.”
The Italian premier also said Bashar had told him Syria would increase security at the border by sending 500 border guards.
Prodi has discussed the plan with Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and said Italy’s “main European partners” had welcomed the proposal.
The UN resolution that halted the war in Lebanon calls for the eventual disarmament of Hezbollah’s fighters, but the UN peacekeeping force does not have a mandate to search out weapons and take them. That job is up to the Lebanese Army, Annan says, but Lebanon has not said whether it will do so. It appeared the peacekeepers will aim to ensure that the fighters are not seen in public with weapons and that no new arms are moved in. Rome is contributing the largest contingent to the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
Yesterday, more than 200 French military engineers arrived at Beirut port, the advance group of a battalion which will bolster the UN force. The French troops brought the total UN force to around 3,350, Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the UNIFIL peacekeepers, said.
In Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said his country will send hundreds of army engineers to help Lebanon clear land mines. “We are sending army engineers — they are in the hundreds — under the UN umbrella,” Aziz said.
