UN to push for Lebanon force, US cautious

ST PETERSBURG, Russia, July 17 (Reuters) United Nations Security Council members will start work on an agreement on deploying a multilateral security force to Lebanon, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

But the White House struck a cautious note on the proposal, saying Washington would like to hear recommendations from a U.N.

mission already in the region on ways to end attacks across the Lebanon-Israel frontier that have killed dozens.

World leaders at a Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg raised the possibility of an intervention force at the weekend.

The leaders said the violence started with Hizbollah guerrillas who killed eight Israelis and captured two soldiers last week.

''We would welcome an examination by the UN Security Council of the possibility of an international security/monitoring presence,'' a joint statement said yesterday.

Annan, after talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said he would push ahead with the plan as a matter of urgency.

With China's President Hu Jintao in St Petersburg as a guest, all five permanent members of the Security Council were present at the summit.

A spokesman for the White House National Security Council, Frederick Jones, emphasised the plan was still embryonic.

''We've clearly stated that we welcome the examination of the possibility of the international monitoring force,'' he said.

Israel said it believes the idea is premature.

''I don't think we're at that stage yet. We're at the stage where we want to be sure that Hizbollah is not deployed at our northern border,'' government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said.

CAUTION U.S. Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said Washington wanted the U.N. to ''look seriously'' at options for boosting an international monitoring force, UNIFIL, already on the Israeli-Lebanese border. UNIFIL is largely inefffective.

The summit's host, Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the force was a matter for the Security Council and would require both Lebanon and Israel to agree on its presence.

Annan said his officials in the region should report back to him with recommendations by the end of this week.

Once the Security Council had agreed on the force, it would need a contingent of well-equipped troops ready to deploy to the region quickly, he added.

Israeli forces bombarded Lebanon for a sixth-day on Monday to punish militant group Hizbollah for rocket attacks on targets inside Israel and for the seizure of Israeli soldiers.

Britain and Italy said any U.N. force in Lebanon would have to much bigger than UNIFIL. That contingent has patrolled the border with Israel since 1978 but has proved powerless to restrain guerrilla attacks or Israeli retaliation.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said 10,000 soldiers would be needed with a robust mandate. Blair said a new force would need to be much larger than UNIFIL's 2,000 troops.

Blair said an end to violence depended ''on the deployment of an international force into that area that can stop the bombardment coming over into Israel and therefore gives Israel the reason to stop its attacks on Hizbollah.'' France and Germany also backed the creation of a U.N.-mandated force.

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