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BEIRUT: The red, orange and blue stripes of the Armenian flag fluttered beside the cedar of Lebanon Thursday as thousands of Lebanese citizens of Armenian descent protested Turkey's planned participation in the UN peacekeeping forces patrolling South Lebanon. "We, the Armenian community, are against the deployment of Turkish troops in South Lebanon, because of their history as a violent state," explained Hagop Havatian, spokesman for the ARF Tashnak Party, the youth party responsible for coordinating Thursday's demonstration. "Last week we sent letters to every member of the Lebanese Parliament asking them to reconsider this issue. We also sent a letter...

(ANSA) - Beijing, September 18 - Italy will work for a swift end to the European Union arms embargo against China, visiting Italian Premier Romano Prodi said here on Monday . The arms embargo was imposed following the violent 1989 crackdown on a pro-democracy protest in Beijing's central Tiennamen Square . "Our position is not new because for years we have considered the embargo something which had more to do with the past than with the future," Prodi said . Lifting the embargo, he observed, "will not change the situation radically because China has become self-sufficient, if not more, in...

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China will contribute 1,000 men to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Premier Wen Jiabao announced this on 18 September during a visit of the Italian premier, Romano Prodi. Analysts believe the move is prompted by economic reasons but also by a desire to reinforce China's role in international affairs. This is the largest peace force ever dispatched by Beijing, already represented in UNIFIL by 187 soldiers. China will also give 40 million yuan (around five million US dollars) in humanitarian aid to Beirut. Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris,...

ALARM - Lebanon: China will send a thousand of men PEIJING - China will send on the whole 1.000 men in Lebanon to reinforce the new mission of maintenance of the peace of the United Nations, announced to Monday Chinese the Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Last week's lifting of the Israeli blockade over Lebanon certainly pleased the Lebanese people who, alone, had to pay the price for the fundamentalist Hezbollah’s monopoly over the decision to launch a futile war against Israel on behalf of Iran and Syria. The Lebanese people alone will, for years to come, bear the consequences of this destructive and inane war that turned the clock back 20 years on the Land of the Cedars and forced a quarter of a million Lebanese to leave their country for greener pastures. Neither the Lebanese people nor their government had any say in the...

Predictable news flash: European and Mediterranean governments are dragging their feet rather than sending troops to participate in the United Nations' peacekeeping effort in Lebanon, as called for in Security Council Resolution 1701. Just how bad has it gotten? All eyes are now on Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who said he might commit up to 3,000 men to what is supposed to be a 15,000-man contingent - but only if other European nations send their fair share. That doesn't look likely. France, living up to its reputation for courage under fire, first offered an embarrassing 200 soldiers. They have...

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said today that Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, had promised to enforce an arms embargo on Hizbollah under a UN resolution that halted Israel's war with the Lebanese group. "The president informed me that Syria supports the Security Council Resolution 1701 and will help in its implementation," Annan told reporters after talks with Assad in Damascus. "While stating Syrian objections to the presence of foreign forces along the Syrian-Lebanese border, the president committed to me that Syria will take all necessary measures to implement in full paragraph 15 of the resolution," Annan added, referring to...

The United Nations peacekeeping force to be deployed in Lebanon is facing further criticism after the admission that its forces will not even be allowed to intercept shipments of arms to Hezbollah from Syria. Speaking in Brussels before heading to the region, Kofi Annan, pictured below, the UN Secretary-General, confirmed that the 15,000-strong force will not meet Israeli demands to police the routes used by the militia to smuggle missiles from Syria. "Troops are not going in there to disarm - let's be clear," he said. Instead, the Unifil force will only carry out interception missions if asked by the...

Israel is faced on its northern and southern borders with two Islamic-fascist terrorist organizations determined to wipe it from the face of the earth. These organizations have operated with impunity as the effective governments in the territories used to launch attacks against Israel while UN observers have stood by and done nothing. Yet the United Nations literally and figuratively shields the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations while trying to immobilize Israel when Israel finally decides to strike back. For example, the UN has facilitated resumption of the financial aid gravy train to Hamas without obtaining a single concession in return....

Russia and other UN Security Council members are unhappy Washington is blocking attempts to pressure Israel over its offensive in Lebanon, Vitaly Churkin, its ambassador to the United Nations, said. Churkin told the Izvestia newspaper in an interview published today that the US position had weakened the position of the United Nations on the crisis. "Discontent has been rising recently among Security Council member countries with the fact that the US is prepared to block any decision which would bring pressure to bear on Israel," Churkin said. "This discontent is expressed practically every day by many delegations during consultations on...

MOSCOW, July 27 (Reuters) - Russia on Thursday denounced the killing of four U.N. military observers, who died in an Israeli air raid in south Lebanon, and urged a ceasefire in fighting between Israel and the radical Lebanese group Hizbollah. "Russia was shocked by this tragedy," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "Attacks and other abuses of peacekeepers cannot be justified and are unacceptable." U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has described the incident, which took place on Tuesday, as "apparently deliberate". Israel has promised a thorough investigation. More than 430 people in Lebanon and more than 50 in Israel...

Canadian killed from UN force complained his position shielding Hizbullah Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 26 July 2006 "...the tragic loss of a soldier yesterday who I happen to know and I think probably is from my Regiment. We've received e-mails from him a few days ago and he described the fact that he was taking within - in one case - three meters of his position "for tactical necessity - not being targeted". Now that's veiled speech in the military and what he was telling us was Hizbullah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were (sic) targeting...

As part of international efforts to end the conflict in southern Lebanon, there has emerged the scheme of a United Nations peacekeeping force to separate the opposing forces. NPR reports that U.N. Secretary General Annan is, predictably, pushing for a robust international force there. But even the White House seems to be considering the idea. “Somehow you’re going to have to provide stability in southern Lebanon,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said last week. “Whether it’s an international stabilization force, whether it is the Lebanese armed forces, all those things are under discussion.” What many seem to forget is that...

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has come up with a very bad idea. He wants to throw a lifeline to Hezbollah, dispatching U.N. peacekeepers to Lebanon... Mr. Annan must explain how his peacekeepers would differ from the current U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has failed miserably ever since it was dispatched in 1978. UNIFIL was created following the Coastal Road Massacre of March 11, 1978 -- when Palestinian terrorists... entered Israel along the Mediterranean coast and hijacked a bus. Thirty-six hostages died. In response, the Israel Defense Force invaded southern Lebanon to destroy terrorist bases there. The U.N....

Some of the Dutch United Nations soldiers who failed to prevent the massacre of Srebenica in July 1995 gave the Serbs a back-slapping welcome, handed over their uniforms and even actively helped to separate Bosnian men from their families, say relatives of the 8,000 men and boys who were murdered. A German attorney is preparing a lawsuit against the UN and the Netherlands. They are unbelievable scenes that Sabaheta Fejzic, a bookkeeper from Vogosca near Srebenica, will never forget. War had been raging for years in Bosnia, and in the summer of 1995 everyone in Srebrenica was scared to death...

The fall of Somalia’s Capital City of Mogadishu is a symbolic victory for the forces of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda Terrorist Organization and is yet another setback for the United Nations. The Islamic rebels, who have been links to Al-Qaeda, seized the city in early June following months of heavy fighting between the city’s rival clans. For Bin Laden and his radical followers this victory can only be compared to the Israeli capture of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War. Bin Laden has quoted in saying, “That it was Al-Qaeda inspired rebels that caused the United States and...

April 19, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — Sudan’s president refused to grant visas to Darfur for a U.N. military assessment mission that wanted to plan for a U.N. peacekeeping mission, a U.N. spokesman said on Wednesday. Omar al-BashirThe Khartoum government has not consented to U.N. troops to augment the African Union soldiers currently trying to stop atrocities in the violent Darfur region but officials said they would discuss it after a peace agreement under negotiation in Abuja, Nigeria. Hedi Annabi, a U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, went to Khartoum this week and spoke to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and other officials...

UN force in Sudan 'will raise al-Qa'eda threat' By Mike Pflanz (Filed: 02/03/2006) Al-Qa'eda's presence in Sudan is likely to soar if the United Nations takes over peacekeeping operations in Darfur from the current African Union force, Jan Pronk, the UN's leading envoy to Sudan, has warned. Deploying peacekeepers drawn from Nato countries, including America, would be a "recipe for disaster" causing terrorist agents to stream in to fight a "jihad" against the blue berets, Mr Pronk said this week. "The climate in Khartoum against the UN is heating up very strongly. There are threats, warnings of recolonisation, invasion, imperialism,...

Serial rapists envy United Nations peacekeepers. And who could blame them? Most rapists do not get to police their own crime scenes, food to trade for sex, diplomatic immunity and indifference from the people supervising them. Sexual abuse charges against U.N. peacekeepers remain high due to the organization's "culture of dismissiveness," according to Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, Jordan's U.N, ambassador. He thinks it could take three to four more years for a reform program to take hold. Potential rape victims in the world's hot spots will have to be patient. There have been allegations against 295 troops, police and...

Why the UN needs reform In 1991, the members of the United Nations threw their collective efforts behind the attempt to guarantee peace and to bring free elections to Cambodia. To one of the world's most abused, tragic nations, the UN sent its biggest, most expensive peacekeeping force in history. In about two years, some 20,000 UN troops passed through the unfortunate country, proving again the cliche about too many cooks spoiling the broth _ except that the ''broth'' was the nation of Cambodia. The peacekeeping mission turned into a travesty which failed to suppress the Khmer Rouge, tripled the...