Lebanon and Israel have agreed a shortlist of countries that could send troops to verify the disarmament of Hizbollah under a US-brokered agreement, a Lebanese official said yesterday, with the United States due to pick countries from the list.
The official declined to identify any of the countries on the shortlist or say how many there were. Another Lebanese official and two foreign diplomats have previously told Reuters that Israel and the United States had vetoed France.
The list was produced during meetings between Lebanon and Israel at the US embassy in Rome this week, the latest round of talks on how to implement a June 26 deal that links Israel’s progressive withdrawal of troops from Lebanon to the disarmament of Hizbollah, which would be ‘verified’ by a third party. Hizbollah is not a party to the agreement and has refused to give up its arsenal.
“We have reached a short list of countries. We decided which parties were impossible for each and set the potential actors,” the Lebanese official said. “The Americans will now decide, and could pick more than one country.”
There was no immediate response from Israel’s foreign ministry to Reuters questions on the shortlist. When asked about the shortlist, a State Department spokesperson said the talks were ‘productive on the technical and expert levels’ but did not provide further details.
The United States has been trying to broker an end to fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hizbollah, which has raged since March in parallel with the wider US-Israeli war against Iran.
The Lebanese official said Beirut had rejected an earlier proposal for private security companies to play the role of third-party verifier of Hizbollah’s disarmament.
A framework for the presence of foreign troops in Lebanon would also need to be agreed, possibly by housing them under a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, whose mandate is due to expire at the end of this year.
&uuid=(email))