In France itself, signs of doubt surfaced abruptly last week, when at the last minute Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie stepped back from announcing, as had been expected, that France would send 3500 troops.
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the UN must spell out what Unifil is expected to do, give it the means to intervene if need be as well as the right to defend itself.
While the UN hammers out these rules, France has sent only 200 personnel from an engineering division.
"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 the material and judicial means at our disposal are," Alliot-Marie said.
"You can't send in men and tell them: 'Look at what is going on [but] you don't have the right to defend yourselves or shoot'."
It is like I have said before - what would happen to the person from UNIFIL who authorised the shoot-down of an F-16 heading north over the border?
Any takers?
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