Germany edges towards sending troops to Lebanon

BERLIN, Aug 15 (Reuters) Germany gave its strongest signal yet today that it will send troops to join a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, a move that is likely to prove divisive in the country 60 years after the Holocaust.

Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said Germany would discuss contributions it could in theory make to the force on Thursday even though Chancellor Angela Merkel has been non-committal so far.

''We want to bring to the meeting on Thursday our possible contributions and that is at the moment still being discussed,'' Jung said ahead of a meeting of government leaders on Wednesday in Berlin on the issue.

A Defence Ministry spokesman cautioned that Jung had not said Germany had yet made any concrete decision to contribute.

''It does not mean that a political decision on whether and how the Bundeswehr will take part was made,'' the spokesman said.

Jung said he plans to make concrete suggestions at a meeting of about 20 potential troop contributing nations on Thursday.

Earlier Eckart von Klaeden, foreign policy spokesman for Merkel's conservatives (CDU-CSU) in parliament, said it was a question of ''how'' rather than ''if'' Germany would contribute.

''I think it is a given that we should contribute but what the contribution will look like will only come after ongoing talks,'' said von Klaeden, who had previously been more cautious.

Merkel will meet coalition party leaders on Wednesday to discuss a possible deployment, a coalition source told Reuters.

The meeting will include Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber, who has expressed scepticism about sending troops to the region for historical and practical reasons. He says the army risks being overstretched with 7,700 soldiers already overseas in Afghanistan, the Balkans and Congo.

Government spokesman Thomas Steg said on Monday the cabinet could decide on Germany's role next week.

The idea that German soldiers might have to shoot at Israelis makes many here uneasy given that 6 million Jews were wiped out under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

Both van Klaeden and Social Democrat party leader Kurt Beck have said one option would be for Germany to send its navy to patrol the coast off Lebanon and Israel.

Beck and the coalition source said another alternative would be to send German police to the Syrian-Lebanese border.

After a month of fighting, a U.N.-brokered truce between Israel and Hizbollah started on Monday. World powers are now in talks about contributions to a force of 15,000 foreign troops.

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