Posted on 08/27/2006 12:50:39 PM PDT by jdm
As the United Nations cobbles together a peacekeeping force for Lebanon, debate is heating up in Moscow about whether to send troops to the Middle East.
A growing consensus of Defense Ministry officials and military analysts oppose sending ground forces. But a handful of political observers counter that the situation offers Russia an opportunity to restore some of its Soviet-era prestige.
"We are examining the situation," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Friday, Interfax reported. "The peacekeepers' status and their rights are not clear, as well as what they will do there and what kind of mandate they will have."
Ivanov, who was in Magadan, added: "No decisions about any Russian military contingent have been made yet. I think it would be premature to do so."
Ivanov's comments appeared to conflict with a report Friday in Kommersant that the Defense Ministry was prepared to send a 2,000-man brigade stationed in Samara to Lebanon.
A Defense Ministry spokesman declined to comment about the report Friday.
Mikhail Margelov, head of the Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee, voiced skepticism about sending troops. "That a number of nations have refused to participate in this operation is an alarm signal for me," Margelov said, according to Interfax.
And Valery Manilov, a former deputy chief of staff of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, said sending troops now would be premature. "As the confrontation unfolds according to Washington's specifications, and as Israel continues to ignore UN resolutions, the presence of our peacekeepers, with their status and duties still unclear, is hardly warranted," he said.
Margelov warned that if President Vladimir Putin decided to send troops to Lebanon, it would prompt heated debate in the Federation Council. By law, the president must get the approval of the upper house of the parliament to send troops abroad.
During last month's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Putin said Russia might participate in a Lebanese operation if the UN Security Council opted to send a peacekeeping mission there. Since then, the president has not said anything about Lebanon.
The UN-sponsored cease-fire took effect Aug. 14 after 34 days of fighting, which claimed the lives of nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon and about 150 Israelis. The conflict broke out after Hezbollah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.
On Friday, Ivanov also dismissed claims that during the fighting Hezbollah used Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles. Israel sent a delegation to Russia last week to complain about the missiles.
"No kind of evidence of Hezbollah having such equipment has been presented to us," Ivanov said, Interfax reported.
Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst with the Center of Political Technologies, said Russian participation could boost the country's prominence in a region where the Soviet Union once wielded considerable influence.
"If Russia distances itself from this situation altogether, that will mean Russian has abandoned the geopolitical position it inherited from the Soviet years," Makarkin said.
But Makarkin added that Russia must determine exactly what its responsibilities would be before sending any troops, Makarkin said.
Dispatching troops to Lebanon would give Russia a useful argument to respond to accusations that Russian peacekeepers have been anything but in the breakaway Moldovan province of Transdnestr and the separatist Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a Kommersant article said.
Both Moldova and Georgia want the Russian troops to leave.
Russia participated in peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone. It is currently taking part in missions in Liberia, Burundi and Sudan.
They have already taken sides -- they can't be peacekeepers.
Send them to take over in KosovO
No thanks.Israel does'nt want them there and neither does the USor UK. russia is part of the problem not the solution. They back all these islamic terrorist.
Actually, despite your ire at Russia playing balance-of-power politics vis-a-vis the US by being 'even handed' toward terror supporting regimes, they have their own Muslim problem (and not just in Chechenya, cf. the recently posted article about the problem posed by Slavic converts to Islam, besides which Hizb ut Tarahir is active in Central Asia).
I, for one, would welcome a Russian presence in Lebanon: they would plainly have an interest in looking out for the Orthodox Christians in the south whose towns and villages were cynically used as launching points for Hezbollah attacks, only to be pummeled in return by the Israelis. Besides the obvious benefit to my coreligionists who are invariably caught in the Mohammedan-Jewish crossfire whenever Israel has a set-to with any enemies in Lebanon, the fact that gratitude toward infidels is not an Islamic virtue (remember 9/11 was our 'thanks' for giving the Muslims an airforce in the Balkans) arms sales to Hezbollah's patrons won't protect the Russian troops from Hezbollah--a fact that might push Putin to give up his ill-conceived balance-of-power act and actually get on board for dealing with the Mohammedan threat.
Yes. And their position vis a vis our enemy is baffling to me.
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