The beginning of the end for the UN's 23-year-old peacekeeping force in Lebanon came late on Tuesday with a recommendation that it should be transformed into an entirely new type of mission.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, said in his six-monthly report to the Security Council that the Interim Force (UNIFIL) had accomplished two of its three tasks by confirming Israel's withdrawal from its 915km occupation zone and assisting in the restoration of Lebanese government's control over the area.
He defined UNIFIL's longterm objective as "the restoration of international peace and security" along the Lebanese-Israel frontier and described its immediate task as maintaining the ceasefire along the frontier.
While he said its functions were essentially "those of an observer mission", he would "be reluctant to entrust the task to observers alone" and proposed "a combination of two battalions of armed infantry plus unarmed observers."
The Security Council is expected to approve his recommendations when it renews UNIFIL's mandate ahead of its expiry date on January 31st.
The conversion will take place "gradually and in stages", the UNIFIL spokesman, Mr Timor Goksel, told The Irish Times.
The first stage would involve a reduction from the current deployment of 5,800 to 4,500, the level which obtained before Israel's withdrawal last May.
While representatives of contributing countries, including Ireland, met in New York on Tuesday, Mr Goksel said they did not "put forward anything specific".
Although last autumn Ireland announced its intention of taking Irishbatt out of UNIFIL by the end of 2001, Mr Goksel said the UN had not been officially notified of Ireland's decision.
An informed source observed that Ireland's assumption of a non-permanent seat on the Security Council could postpone the withdrawal of Irishbatt. Instead, Ireland's commitment could be run down before January 4th, 2003, the date set for the creation of the European Rapid Reaction Force.
