EU states ready to join Lebanon force - Solana

BRUSSELS, July 24 (Reuters) Several European Union countries are ready to contribute to a peace force for Lebanon but problems remain in ensuring it can fulfil its mission, EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said today.

''It's a real possibility. It is not an easy force to deploy but we have been working since Wednesday to try to construct a concept that would make it possible to deploy under the umbrella of the UN Security Council,'' Solana said after meeting Lebanese parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri in Brussels.

''I think several member states of the European Union will be ready to provide all necessary assistance,'' he told a joint news conference.

He declined to say who would be responsible for disarming Iranian-backed Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas, who triggered the crisis by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and killing eight in a cross-border raid and have fired rockets into northern Israel.

Solana said an international conference on Lebanon in Rome on Wednesday would discuss a global political solution, humanitarian assistance and ''elements for guaranteeing security''.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had told him as early as last Wednesday that Israel, traditionally wary of international forces on its border, would find such a force useful if it had a robust mandate, he said.

Solana said the aim of the operation would be to implement UN Security Council resolution 1559 that led to the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and called for the disarmament of militias -- a reference to Hizbollah.

Asked whether a multilateral force would secure Lebanon's other borders to prevent arms being smuggled to Hizbollah, as Israel has suggested, Solana said officials working on the concept were considering both the southern and northern borders.

''We are undoubtedly looking at both points of difficulty but to solve the problem we are still just at the start,'' he said.

Hariri, son of the former Prime Minister assassinated in 2004, called for a ''final global solution'' so that Lebanon was no longer a target of Israel's latest weaponry or a playground for other powers.

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