Quelle Surprise
The makeup and arrival timetable for a beefed-up United Nations force that is supposed to bolster the Lebanese army was also thrown into disarray when France, which was supposed to lead the mission, said it would only send 200 combat soldiers to south Lebanon, rather than the thousands it was expected to contribute.
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Astute French foreign policy has a new punch line: the couragous French military.
EUReferendum - of Green Helmet Fame - has more.
Update: Captain Ed drops the hammer:
If nothing else showed the uselessness of the United Nations, this latest folly should convince everyone of it. The UN fancies itself as the modern mechanism of peace. However, in its sixty years of being, the only accomplishment it has achieved has been the prolongation of every conflict it enters. The UN provides no solutions; they fix all disputes in amber and hope that the boredom kills them. That strategy has proven singularly unsuccessful, and nothing demonstrates that better than the UNIFIL force that the UN wants to bolster. Most people did not know that the UN had a peacekeeping force on the Israel-Lebanon border for almost thirty years — and the reason why is because they have proven themselves nonentities in the effort to stop war.
captains quarters
Update 3: France Explains:
“You have to tell the troops why they are there. To support the Lebanese army, certainly, but to what extent? In what fields? Secondly, we also need to know what are the material and judicial means at our disposal,” said Alliot-Marie.
“You can’t send in men and tell them: ‘Look at what is going on, (but) you don’t have the right to defend yourself or to shoot’,” she said.
French officials are particularly concerned about how the expanded force is expected to interact with Hezbollah, the militant group whose fighters who shot nearly 4,000 rockets into Israel during more than a month of fighting with Israeli troops.
ap cnn
Given that the French were carrying water for Hezbollah as these negotiations proceeded it is not a bit surprising that they are more than a little confused as to the role of the UN International Force. After all, they pretty much insisted on the confusion. Dolts.
Written by jay on August 19th, 2006 with
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