[WCUSP] Defense News: Lebanon Awaits Military Aid Promised by West

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

“The LAF is what is keeping Lebanon together and protecting its  democracy,” 
Temsah said. “Any setback to the LAF in its fight against terrorists  would 
be a setback to the U.S. policy in the Middle East and a loss in the  ongoing 
global war on terrorism.”

“Rushing the ammunition was a very nice  gesture, but it is not enough,” 
said Ahmed Temsah, a defense analyst based here.  “The LAF needs better and more 
modern weapons to achieve superiority against  local armed factions that have 
been well-armed by Syria and  Iran.”

This is the Lebanese army that was invisible when the country  was attacked 
by Israel, armed and resupplied by the US. We know that the "local  armed 
factions" they are primarily referring to is the one that sucessfully  resisted 
Israeli occupation from 1982 to 2000 and embarrassed the highly touted  Israeli 
military once again last summer. Apparently, Israel has balked at the US  
supplying weapons to the LAF that might be turned against Israel at a future  time 
should the LAF have a change of leadership or the weapons fall into other  
hands.

_http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2816720&C=mideast_ 
(http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2816720&C=mideast) 
Lebanon Awaits Military Aid Promised by West 
By _RIAD  KAHWAJI_ 
(mailto:rkahwaji at defensenews.com?subject=Question%20from%20DefenseNews.com%20reader) , BEIRUT
Defense News



 
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Pledges made over the past few months by Western countries  to give Lebanon 
weapons to replace aging tanks and artillery have been broken or  frozen 
awaiting political decisions, leaving the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)  virtually on 
its own in its first direct engagement in the global war on  terrorism.


The LAF wants to improve its arsenal, not just restock its  ammunition, as it 
fights al-Qaida-linked Islamic terrorists in Palestinian  refugee camps, 
according to military officials and experts here.


“We are only asking for new weapons that would give us a  qualitative 
superiority against an enemy armed with similar or even better  weapons than what the 
LAF has,” said one senior Lebanese Army official.
Late last year, the official said, Lebanon asked the  United States to 
deliver $800 million in weapons over three years, including  attack helicopters, M60 
tanks, second-generation TOW missiles, M109  self-propelled artillery, 
coastal patrol gunboats, some 250 modern night-vision  goggles and an air-defense 
system.


“All that we got so far is nothing,” the LAF official  said.


An official at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut confirmed that  the LAF had 
presented what he called a “wish list” that included “lethal  weapons” and to which 
U.S. officials have given no formal response.
He said Washington wants to assist the LAF, but there were  some political 
limitations as well as the logistical difficulties in finding the  needed 
weapons quickly.


The West’s reluctance to send arms to Lebanon has  encouraged Russia, which 
has offered a substantial donation of weapons if  Lebanon agrees to buy some at 
a discount, the LAF official said.


“The LAF is now seriously considering the Russian offer,  and we could use 
some of the cash made available by some Arab Gulf states to buy  urgently needed 
systems like anti-tank guided missiles, attack infantry vehicles  and 
night-vision goggles,” said the official.


Asked about possible arms shipments to Lebanon at the  latest meeting of the 
foreign ministers of the Middle East “quartet” — from the  United Nations, 
United States, Russia and European Union — in Berlin on May 31,  Russian Foreign 
Minister Sergei Lavrov gave an evasive answer:


“We always based our decisions on the necessity to respect  existing 
international accords and by the necessity to avoid arms shipments that  might 
destabilize the situation,” he was quoted by news agencies as  saying.


Asked to clarify what kind of arms he meant, Lavrov said:  “Those who 
professionally deal with arms shipment perfectly know what kind of  shipments are 
destabilizing and which are not.”
A spokesman for Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms  export monopoly, 
declined comment on possible arms shipments to  Lebanon.


The LAF official said the Lebanese government has been  urging Washington to 
reconsider policies that bar the sale of lethal weapons to  countries that 
border Israel and are still at war with it.


“The U.S. should take into consideration that the LAF is  now fighting 
terrorism and thus must forget about its old policies and start  supplying it with 
effective weapons,” said Walid Jumblat, a Lebanese Druze  leader and member of 
Parliament.


The U.S. Embassy official said that Washington is indeed  reviewing the 
policy.


In a June 5 statement, State Department officials in  Washington said, “In 
light of events in Tripoli and urgent requests from the  government of Lebanon, 
we are expediting deliveries of planned U.S. military  assistance to the 
Lebanese Armed Forces, as well as enlisting the support of  international partners 
to provide additional assistance. We are currently  expediting procurement and 
delivery of equipment purchased with Lebanese  national funds, rather than 
U.S. security assistance monies. Most of the  deliveries to support the Lebanese 
Armed Forces over the last several weeks were  funded in this way.”
At press time, a total of nine U.S. Air Force transport  planes and eight 
airlifters from Arab countries have flown into Lebanon with  ammunition. And on 
June 8, Germany delivered one 20-meter and one 34-meter  coastal patrol boat 
and six naval radar systems, an LAF official  said.


“Rushing the ammunition was a very nice gesture, but it is  not enough,” 
said Ahmed Temsah, a defense analyst based here. “The LAF needs  better and more 
modern weapons to achieve superiority against local armed  factions that have 
been well-armed by Syria and Iran.”


“The LAF is what is keeping Lebanon together and  protecting its democracy,” 
Temsah said. “Any setback to the LAF in its fight  against terrorists would 
be a setback to the U.S. policy in the Middle East and  a loss in the ongoing 
global war on terrorism.”


The LAF official said, “We also suspect that the U.S. is  putting pressure on 
other Western and Arab countries to not supply us with  weapons, and to only 
provide us with ammunition and vehicles for logistical  support.”


He said that a military aid package pledged by Belgium  late last year, which 
included 45 Leopard-1 tanks, 70 armored personnel carriers  and 24 M109 
self-propelled guns, had suddenly gone to another country with no  clear 
explanation from Brussels.


“Officials in Belgium had made the pledge without us  asking for it, and we 
had made all the needed arrangements before they suddenly  changed their minds 
and said they sold the weapons to another country,” said the  official.


A Belgian Ministry of Defense official said June 8 that  the donation of 
equipment was canceled because of the Belgian government's  worries about the 
political-military situation in Lebanon.


“It's not about the quality or availability of the weapons  themselves, it's 
about their potential for aggravating what is already an  unstable situation 
in Lebanon — not only regarding the factions there, but for  our troops 
involved,” said the official. “We felt it is not the time or place to  make this 
kind of transfer.”


And nine Gazelle attack helicopters donated by the United  Arab Emirates 
(UAE) arrived with heavy machine guns but without HOT antitank  missiles, the LAF 
official said. He quoted UAE officials as saying they did not  send the 
missiles because they were old and needed replacing.


“What is the Gazelle good for without its weapon systems?  This is insane,” 
said Temsah, a retired LAF brigadier general.


Nevertheless, the LAF sent the Gazelle into action against  the Fatah 
Al-Islam radical Islamist group in the Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp in  northern 
Lebanon, chasing snipers off rooftops.


“If we had the needed hardware we had asked for, like  night-vision goggles, 
TOW missiles and attack helicopters armed with guided  missiles, the LAF would 
have completed the job in Nahr Al-Bared much faster with  lesser losses,” the 
military official said.


Since the Nahr Al-Bared fighting began May 28, at least 42  Lebanese soldiers 
have been killed and more than 100 wounded in battles against  fighters armed 
with heavy machine guns, mortars, multiple rocket launchers,  high-powered 
rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.


The battles began spreading June 3 when the Syrian-backed  Islamist faction 
known as Jund Al-Sham attacked a Lebanese Army post at the  entrance of the Ain 
El-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. Two  LAF soldiers and 
two terrorists were killed in the gunfight, which ended with a  truce 
brokered by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) factions at the  camp.


Lebanese security services said June 6 that they had over  the past week 
broken up several terrorist rings linked to Fatah Al-Islam and  al-Qaida, and 
discovered and confiscated several arms caches that were in the  north and near 
Beirut. •


Nabi Abdullaev in Moscow, _John  T. Bennett_ 
(mailto:jbennett at defensenews.com?subject=Question%20from%20DefenseNews.com%20reader)  in Washington and 
_Brooks  Tigner_ (mailto:btigner at defensenews.com?subject=Question%20from%20D
efenseNews.com%20reader)  in Brussels contributed to this report. 





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