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Nations Try to Flout UN Resolution on Lebanon

Syrian leader Bashar Assad on Tuesday warned the United Nations against deploying international peacekeepers along his nation`s border with Lebanon as part of an effort to deny arms shipments to Hizballah. In an interview with Arab TV this week, Assad said that the deployment, which Israel is pushing for, "would be a withdrawal of Lebanese sovereignty and a hostile positioning." Syria doesn`t recognition the legitimacy of Lebanese existence, and for that matter sees Israel as part of a "Greater Syria".

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 instituted an arms embargo against Hizballah, a terror group supported by Syria as well as Iran, and up to 2,000 Lebanese soldiers have already deployed along the border in compliance with that agreement. A UN draft on the proposed rules of engagement for an expanded peacekeeping force authorizes them to employ "deadly force", and even offensive military action against anyone that tries to prevent implementation of Resolution 1701...something Syria doesn`t like the sound of.

Dismissing Assad`s threat, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy Wednesday told French television that an increased UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) would assist the Lebanese in enforcing the embargo "at all the borders. I repeat, at all the borders." An Iranian Revolutionary Guard official, quoted by a London-based Arabic newspaper, said a large shipment of arms earmarked for Hizballah had already arrived in Damascus.