Germany & Israel both agree on Lebanese naval patrols

Germany's conservative Die Welt said of German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung "isn't sitting at the most thankless post in the government -- he's sitting on an ejector seat. His troops are in disastrous state. New missions are more or less impossible and current ones such as Afghanistan are becoming riskier." (Germany is currently taking part in 10 international military missions.)

Die Welt's reasoning ..?

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has told Kofi Annan today, that they would accept German naval vessels patrolling the country's coast, which Berlin had offered in lieu of ground troops.

Initially Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said allowing a foreign country to stop ships on its coast, which Germany requests as part of its mandate, is a major intrusion into national sovereignty, which required approval from the cabinet on Sunday.

Whilst the UN agrees Merkel has to sell the idea to a sceptical German parliament and public.

Merkel has made her position as clear as she could ...In a heated Bundestag debate yesterday she said, "We can search for criteria for as long as we like, but the world and its conflicts won't accommodate them,"

Oskar Lafontaine, joint leader of the socialist Left Party, accepted the deployment because rejection would increase the likely hood of terrorist attacks in Germany. He was savaged by the leftist daily Die Tageszeitung who said "Fear of terrorist attacks at home is not a good reason to support deployment. Using this argument is submitting to the demands of violent criminals."

Despite the demands of the IDF the Israel cabinet have (under huge US pressure) agreed to the arrangements, which will not fall into place for 2 weeks (The German defense ministry has said it would take 2 weeks to deploy in the Middle East once the mission -expected to last 1 year, is formally approved by the German parliament.) and in the interim according to the Prime Minister's Office, Annan said that until the German force arrived, Italian, French, British and Greek forces would supervise the ports.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy is reported to have agreed .. "We have accepted. The decision has been taken that we will participate in monitoring surveillance along the coast to ensure there is no delivery [of weapons to Hizbullah] - or an embargo,"

Details of the French maritime patrols remained to be worked out, Douste-Blazy said, but France would carry them out for "2/3 weeks."

In the meantime, pending a decision on the naval force by the Bundestag , the German government said today it will send police and customs officers with X-ray equipment to reinforce controls at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International airport. Middle East Airways landed the first post war commerical flight there this morning.

Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said that the customs and police officers would act as advisers to Lebanese authorities at the airport.

Yet further proof that the US Administration is determined to drag as many nations into this post-confict mess as possible, and to militarize the Israeli border to meet their demands. Next thing they put up a sign "NGO's not welcome".

As my nanny used to say, "it'll end in tears".