Uh, oh. How much do you want to bet Congress re-names “French Fries” “Freedom Fries” due to this?
France on Thursday rebuffed pleas by U.N. officials to make a major contribution to a peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, setting back efforts to deploy an international military force to help police a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, according to U.N. and French officials.
French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France would contribute only 200 additional troops to the U.N. operation in southern Lebanon, which the Security Council wants to expand from 2,000 troops to 15,000. Chirac said that a force of about 1,700 French troops and crew members on warships off the coast would provide logistical support.
Wasn’t France pushing for this plan that they’re not willing to back with boots-on-the-ground?
OOPS! A new report says France will double its commitment — to 400 troops. Now, that’s impressive. AND:
Senior U.N. peacekeeping officials said they had hoped France would send thousands of troops, forming the backbone of a large and robust mission that would spur other countries to join. Under a Security Council resolution adopted last week, the U.N. force is to help 15,000 Lebanese soldiers take control of southern Lebanon as Israeli soldiers withdraw.
The French decision on troop levels, reported Thursday in the Paris daily Le Monde, sent U.N. officials scrambling during a meeting here to find countries willing to fill the void.
The Post also has an editorial that seems to be virtually sputtering with consternation over the French move. Read it in full but here’s the beginning and the end:
THROUGHOUT this summer’s crisis in relations between Israel and Lebanon, France has been liberal with its advice and admonitions, as befits the major power it claims to be. Now that the time has arrived to assume the responsibility of a major power, however, France appears suddenly bashful. The consequence for the peace deal it helped broker could be calamitous.
AND:
Now that Israel is withdrawing and Hezbollah fighters are emerging with a swagger, French President Jacques Chirac says he is ready to send only an engineering company of 200 soldiers to join 200 serving in the current, and impotent, U.N. force in Lebanon. The French general who had been commanding that force will remain until his tour expires in February; this is apparently as much as the French had in mind when they talked about “leading” the force.
French officials said last night that they have not ruled out a larger contribution. It all depends on the rules of engagement, other nations’ contributions and other matters under delicate discussion in New York. Let’s hope that Mr. Chirac’s 200 troops are not in fact the last word. Other nations will be less likely to contribute if France remains on the sidelines, and without a substantial force the peace settlement — fragile to begin with — is far less likely to endure. That, in turn, would seem to offer precisely the wrong lesson for a European nation eager to provide international leadership and to prove that diplomacy and peacekeeping can accomplish more than war.
An International Herald Tribune story underscored exactly how much the French had “helped” the UN’s efforts:
The UN peacekeeping force being assembled for Lebanon suffered a surprise setback Thursday as France, which had been expected to lead the effort, said it would initially send only 200 combat troops.
The move brought a note of confusion and urgency to a meeting at the United Nations in New York of officials from countries weighing whether to provide troops to an expanded UN force meant to secure peace between Israel and Hezbollah.
The UN official in charge of the meeting said that it was critical that the United Nations pull together at least 3,500 troops within a few days.
“It’s a very precarious, fragile situation, with a lot of trigger-happy people,” the deputy secretary general, Mark Malloch Brown, told the BBC. “We’ve got to, in the next days, generate at least 3,500 troops as a down payment on the larger force that we need in place in the coming weeks.”
It was unclear whether other countries, counting on French leadership, might now rethink their own offers.
But in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear that Germany would send no combat troops. She did confirm that it might help with naval efforts to secure the Lebanese coast, The Associated Press reported. The government said it was awaiting clarification on the rules of military engagement before making a concrete offer.
Freedom Fries anyone?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.