July 30, 2000
The United Nations overcame a last minute block by Hizbollah guerrillas Sunday to finish deploying its peacekeepers at four positions along the Israeli-Lebanese frontier. Successful negotiations between the U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the guerrillas, finally allowed U.N. peacekeeping forces to move into the last of four positions in south Lebanon, vacated by Israel two months ago.
``There is no problem. UNIFIL troops will go ahead,'' Lebanese army Brigadier Maher Tufaili told Reuters after leading negotiations with the guerrillas near the village of Rmaiysh in the western sector of south Lebanon. UNIFIL confirmed in a statement the end of the first stage of its deployment in south Lebanon.
``The redeployment of UNIFIL troops to the Blue Line continued in four different locations today. The deployment went smoothly and no problems were encountered,'' the statement said. UNIFIL deployment along the so-called blue line will continue after a meeting with Lebanese army officers Monday. Lebanon has said it will deploy a 1,000-member security unit in the south, half of them soldiers, after UNIFIL completes its deployment.
Hizbollah guerrillas had blocked the UNIFIL deployment near Rmaiysh for more than two hours while the United Nations moved into three other positions in the south. Tufaili accompanied UNIFIL commanding officer Major General Seth Kofi Obeng to an hour of negotiations with the Hizbollah group at the spot before a Nepali peacekeeping unit moved in.
NEPALI UNIT HALTED
Earlier the Nepali unit, comprising 45 soldiers with three armored personnel carriers and six jeeps stood by as three Hizbollah guerrillas armed with machineguns watched and two others took a position behind a block of concrete. A Hizbollah (Party of God) field officer had said his group did not have orders to facilitate the deployment at Rmaiysh but the Muslim group issued a statement denying any problems with UNIFIL.
Israel withdrew its forces from a 15 km (nine mile) occupation zone on May 24, ending 22 years of occupation and honoring a decades old U.N. Security Council resolution. Hizbollah had led the fight to oust Israel from the zone.
Thirty Indian UNIFIL troops with two armored personnel carriers and three trucks took up a position near the village of Abbasiyah on the edge of the eastern sector Sunday, a Reuters correspondent said. Five Hizbollah guerrillas with machineguns watched the deployment, while Israeli soldiers observed it from the other side of the border. Thirty soldiers of UNIFIL's Swedish and Finnish units with six armored personnel carriers, two jeeps and a bulldozer moved into another border position facing the Israeli village of Mutella.
Another Reuters correspondent in the western sector saw a UNIFIL Fijian unit of 30 soldiers with four armored personnel carriers take up a position south of Naqoura town. Israeli soldiers with two tanks watched from their own position.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud gave the go-ahead to UNIFIL Saturday after a telephone call with new Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syria is Lebanon's main foreign power broker with 35,000 troops on its territory. Since the Israeli pullout, Lebanon has blocked the deployment of U.N. troops and its own soldiers in the area until it was satisfied all Israeli border violations had ended.
Lebanon has faced international pressure to approve the U.N. deployment and to send its own troops to the border to replace the Hizbollah guerrillas, who took charge of security in the vacated area after Israel withdrew.
