EU foreign policy chief: Bloc in favor of extending mandate of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas tells AFP that the bloc is in favor of extending the mandate of United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon, which is to expire this year.

“Our member states have been saying that there can’t be any security vacuum in southern Lebanon, so everybody is worried about the UNIFIL mandate ending,” she says in an interview during a visit to Lebanon, where she met senior officials.

“It would be most welcomed if this mandate is extended, so that is the position of the member states,” she adds.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which now counts some 7,500 personnel from nearly 50 countries, has been in place since 1978, although its presence has not prevented repeated outbreaks of conflict.

Under US pressure, the UN Security Council voted last year to end UNIFIL’s mandate on December 31, 2026.

But in March, Lebanese terror group Hezbollah drew the country into the broader Middle East war by attacking Israel, which responded with massive airstrikes and a ground invasion that Lebanon says have killed more than 4,300 people, without differentiating between combatants and civilians.

Israel maintains troops in a self-declared “security zone” running around 10 kilometers (six miles) inside Lebanon along the border.

Violence has decreased since a ceasefire following a US-Iran understanding in June, and a US-sponsored Lebanon-Israel framework agreed later that month.

The framework deal involves the disarmament of Hezbollah, a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the region, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones,” but the process has largely stalled.

Kallas says that in the US-sponsored Israel-Lebanon deal “there should be somebody who is verifying whether the parties are keeping to their agreements.”

“So, as long as you don’t have any kind of international force yet ready to do that… it’s dangerous when one mission like UNIFIL ends and the other one has not started yet,” Kallas says.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.