January 15, 2003
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday he had slashed the 25-year-old peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to 2,000 troops from 5,800 a year ago and asked the Security Council to extend its life for another six months.
Annan made the request after Lebanon wrote him to say renewal was needed to ensure regional peace and stability. The U.N. force monitors a so-called Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon, mapped out by the United Nations in 2000 following Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.
The mission's mandate expires at the end of January, and Annan asked that it be renewed until July 31. A major problem with the Blue Line is that Lebanon and Hizbollah guerrillas operating in the country's south insist that an area called the Shebaa Farms is part of Lebanon while the United Nations says it is Syrian land captured and occupied by Israel in 1967.
In a report to the 15-nation Security Council, Annan said the area had generally been calm in the past six months despite continued confrontation over Shebaa Farms, an unresolved dispute over water rights and repeated Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, followed by Hizbollah anti-aircraft fire that at times crosses into northern Israel.
"Each violation of the Blue Line and any provocation emanating from either side risks escalation of tensions and descent into confrontation," he said. Annan, who has long pressed Beirut to assert control of all of southern Lebanon rather than leave it partially under Hizbollah control, said Lebanese armed forces had become more active in the south in recent months although the government still refuses to deploy troops all the way to the Blue Line, arguing it will not do so until there is a comprehensive peace with Israel.
The U.N. mission was gradually cut back to 2,000 soldiers at the Security Council's request, at least in part to put pressure on the Lebanese government to step into the vacuum left by the departing troops.
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