Lebanon and Israel advance Hezbollah disarmament plan

Lebanon and Israel have agreed a shortlist of countries that could send troops to verify the disarmament of Hezbollah under a U.S.-brokered agreement, a Lebanese official said on Friday, with the United States due to pick countries from the list.

The official declined to identify any of the countries on the shortlist or say how many there were. Another Lebanese official and two foreign diplomats have previously told Reuters that Israel and the United States had vetoed France.

The list was produced during meetings between Lebanon and Israel at the U.S. embassy in Rome this week, the latest round of talks on how to implement a June 26 deal that links Israel's progressive withdrawal of troops from Lebanon to the disarmament of Hezbollah, which would be "verified" by a third party.

Hezbollah is not a party to the agreement and has refused to give up its arsenal.

"We have reached a short list of countries. We decided which parties were impossible for each and set the potential actors," the Lebanese official said. "The Americans will now decide, and could pick more than one country."

There was no immediate response from Israel's foreign ministry to Reuters questions on the shortlist. When asked about the shortlist, a State Department spokesperson said the talks were "productive on the technical and expert levels" but did not provide further details.

LEBANON REJECTS PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS

The United States has been trying to broker an end to fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which has raged since March in parallel with the wider U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

Two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, Hezbollah fired at Israel in solidarity with Tehran. Israeli forces responded with aerial bombardments and a ground assault, seizing a strip of land extending about 10 km (6 miles) deep into southern Lebanon. More than a million Lebanese civilians were forced to flee their homes.

The Lebanese official said Beirut had rejected an earlier proposal for private security companies to play the role of third-party verifier of Hezbollah's disarmament.  

"All of the actors proposed are countries. We still need to discuss exactly how this would work, how many forces would be deployed and how they would work with the Lebanese army," the official said.

A framework for the presence of foreign troops in Lebanon would also need to be agreed, possibly by housing them under a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, whose mandate is due to expire at the end of this year. 

The Lebanese official said that would require a new U.N. Security Council resolution, which the U.S. and Israel were now willing to consider in what he called a breakthrough. Other possibilities include housing the troops under a separate U.N. agency or through a memorandum of understanding with Lebanon. 

The talks did not, however, produce an agreement on the next area from which Israeli troops would withdraw so that Lebanese troops could take control. Beirut had proposed Bint Jbeil and Khiam, two large towns that have been hit hard by air strikes and where Israeli troops have razed entire neighbourhoods. 

The next round of talks is set for early September, the official said.