Chirac to Send 200 Extra Troops to Lebanon

The French president, Jacques Chirac, said tonight that France will commit an additional 200 troops to a strengthened UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

There had been expectations that France would make a larger commitment and the announcement disappointed some UN officials.

The UN resolution which ended a month of fighting between Israel and Lebanon called for an expansion of the current UN force in Lebanon - named Unifil - from 2,000 troops to 15,000.

Thousands of Lebanese troops began moving into the south this morning, joining up with the existing UN force.

Some UN officials fear that the size of the contribution from France - a former colonial power in Lebanon - may be a disincentive to other countries considering contributing troops.

A report this morning in the French daily Le Monde said UN officials believed it would be "devastating" to the force if France gave a small contribution.

Mr Chirac's office made the announcement about the troops after the president had spoken on the telephone with the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. It is thought Mr Annan had asked for a larger contribution.

The president's office said France was also prepared to keep 1,700 French troops mobilised in the region who in recent weeks have been evacuating French and other foreign nationals from Lebanon. The soldiers have also been sending in humanitarian aid from warships and other vessels off the Lebanese coast in the Mediterranean.

France currently leads Unifil and 200 of its existing troops are French. Mr Chirac said the new commitment was a doubling of France's contribution.

Mr Chirac told Mr Annan that France was prepared to lead the expanded force but he also repeated demands from French officials that the UN clarify "the mission, the rules of engagement and the resources" of the boosted UN force.

He also said the choice of contingents should reflect "the commitment of all the international community". Brunei, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, and Turkey are among other countries that said they could commit troops to the expanded Unifil.

The proposal will be presented at a UN meeting in New York later today designed to flesh out which countries will participate in the peacekeeping force.

The French military is clearly unhappy about rushing into the mission following disastrous peacekeeping operations over the past three decades.

France lost 58 paratroopers in a 1983 bomb attack in Beirut and 84 soldiers during a mission to Bosnia in the early 1990s.

Lebanese troops began moving into the country's south as Israeli soldiers started pulling out. The movement into the Hizbullah strongholds by Lebanese troops is a key provision of the UN ceasefire plan that ended the fighting. The plan is for 15,000 of them to deploy in the south, an area they have largely kept away from for four decades.

Only around 3,500 extra troops from the UN are expected to be ready to set foot in Lebanon before the end of next week.

Yesterday Israel's military chief Dan Halutz warned that the Israeli army was prepared to remain in the region for up to a month. His deputy, however, later repeated earlier promises that the 30,000-strong Israeli force would pull back within a fortnight.

The Israeli withdrawal could be slowed down if a substantial expansion to Unifil does not materialise.

This morning the Israeli withdrawal appeared to be picking up speed, with Israeli media reporting that troops had moved out of 50% of the areas they captured during the war and the military saying that it had begun "transferring responsibility" over the region. The Lebanese army said it had no direct contact with the Israeli military to coordinate the handover.

Lebanese forces arrived in the strategic eastern town of Marjayoun early this morning and were deployed in the coastal towns of Tyre and Naqoura this afternoon, a Lebanese military spokesman told Guardian Unlimited.

He said that the army planned to have 2,000-6,000 troops deployed south of the Litani river by the end of the day, and at least 15,000 by the weekend.

Brigades would initially be deployed by sea because of the difficulty of moving over roads and bridges damaged by Israeli shelling during the 34-day war.

A major sticking point remains between the Israeli and Lebanese positions over the disarmament of Hizbullah. Israeli officials argue that the UN resolution that ended the fighting on Monday calls for Hizbullah to be disarmed and that this is now the responsibility of the UN force and Lebanese military.

But the carefully negotiated text of the resolution only calls for the Lebanese government to be in political and military control of southern Lebanon, and the country's cabinet has thrashed out a compromise whereby Hizbullah will hold on to its weapons, but not show them openly.

Hundreds of people died in the fighting that broke out more than a month ago between Israeli troops and Hizbullah fighters in Lebanon, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee the hostilities.