President Bush calls for disarming Hezbullah
US President George Bush held a press conference today, at which he called for quick deployment of an international force with robust rules of engagement to help uphold the fragile ceasefire in Lebanon.Shortly after the UN force deploys, Washington plans to push for another Security Council resolution that will instruct the multinational force to disarm Hezbullah.
US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said that a critical element in a resolution for resolving the crisis is implementation of Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of all armed militias.
It should only happen....
The problem is that the Europeans will be afraid to try to disarm Hezbullah and the Muslim countries will refuse to disarm them.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:42 PM
4 Comments:
I suspect Bush's tactical goal here is not to achieve what's plainly impossible, get the UN to impartially do it's job.
His goal is to show clearly before the world that the UN cannot, or more precisely, will not serve as an honest broker military peace-keeper in Lebanon.
When, NOT IF, the next round of war begins between Israel and Iran/Syria/Hezbollah, having this obvious UN failure as a matter of record could be helpful. It could help gain Israel and the US some honest understanding and sympathy from the international community (even if only silent and tacit) when Israel and the US militarily do what has to be done.
The UN security council is an obstacle to peace.
Resolutions by UN security council have allowed Israel’s enemies to escape from military conflicts while allowing them to continue to deny the existence of Israel, the country they were fighting with. Without the UN these countries would have had to negotiate cease fires directly with Israel. This would be a good dose of reality for them and would break down the barriers to direct negotiations for a permanent peace.
Theoretically the UN is supposed to have the authority to compel combatant countries to stop fighting. In reality, the UN is rarely capable of enforcing it's resolutions. Furthermore, terrorist organizations like Hezballah are not members of the UN and therefore the UN has no authority over them.
In the recent Israeli Lebanese war it would have been much better if there was a cease fire negotiated directly between Israel and Lebanon rather than indirectly through the UN Security council. If the parties had to sign an agreement then there would be much more pressure for them to live up to their agreements and if they didn’t uphold them it would be clear to the world who was violating what.
If noncombatent nations want to help guarantee the agreement, they can do so without the help of the UN. Signatures of guarantor nations on treaties force them to make firm comitments and would prevent the situation we have where some European nations which seemed to have pledged toops to UNIFIL seemed to have backed out of their pledges.
Dave in pa:
Nail, head, hit hit hit.
This is a game of chess. Bush is positioning pieces. One of those pieces is to return a little rhetorical fire towards the arabs/muslims who scream about strawman resolutions Israel "ignores". Now we have a real situation where hezb launched a war, killing lots of people.
They are clearly the responsibly party, and Bush is basically pushing the UN to issue a resolution that if ignored, could enable additional action. Give the follow-on Israeli government a little additional breathing room. 1701 does IMO, though the SGUN doesn't seem to have read the part about "no rearming hezb", or is willfully ignorant, naive, or a tool of the arab/islamicists. This gives even more room to operate.
By follow-on government, I am hoping that Israel can figure out how to clean government house in the next 90 days or less.
Kranky,
It won't happen in the next ninety days. It could take as long as ten months (if Olmert won't yield, the failure to pass a budget in March will cause elections 90 days later). My guess is it will take about 6-7 months. They like spring elections here.
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