Hezbollah's weapons cache an obstacle

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah's huge cache of short- and long-range weapons loomed large Tuesday over the tenuous truce between the Islamic group and Israel as Lebanese officials grappled with what to do with the militia's arsenal.

Lebanese officials said they have largely dismissed the idea of disarming Hezbollah, which is now more popular than ever among the country's large Shiite Muslim population.

Instead, they spent Tuesday in tense discussions with Hezbollah representatives over how to allow the group's fighters to keep their weapons while ceding military authority in southern Lebanon to 15,000 Lebanese troops and a still-unformed United Nations peacekeeping force.

Lebanese officials made it clear that no Lebanese troops would be sent to southern Lebanon until a compromise is reached.

"The army won't be deployed to south Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah — something Israel wasn't able to do itself," Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Lebanese television.

Without an agreement on what to do with Hezbollah's weapons, which include thousands of anti-tank rockets and uncounted numbers of long- and medium-range missiles, the deployment of an international peacekeeping force also was likely to be delayed.

France is expected to lead the force, and several countries, including Spain, Indonesia, Turkey and Italy, were considering sending troops.

Disarming Hezbollah was a key goal of the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, and U.S. officials have said the Lebanese government is required to disarm the group under previous U.N. resolutions.

But the resolution that established the current cease-fire, which went into effect Monday, doesn't specifically call for the disarmament of Hezbollah. It also doesn't say how U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army are to control the area in the face of an armed Hezbollah that has exercised unchallenged military authority since Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago after a difficult 18-year occupation.

The confusion, said Timor Goksel, a former official with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, is one reason that countries have been reluctant to contribute forces.

"Everybody wants to know what is the exact mission; nobody is happy with this wishy-washy U.N. mandate," said Goksel, who now teaches at the American University in Beirut.

Still, Israeli troops continued to trickle out of southern Lebanon on Tuesday and prepared to hand over territory to 2,000 U.N. peacekeepers who were already in Lebanon under an old agreement that ended fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces in Lebanon in 1978.

Meanwhile, Lebanese residents were flooding back into the area at the rate of 6,000 an hour, the government said. Among them were many young men who were clearly Hezbollah fighters who had resurfaced as civilians. Where they'd left their weapons wasn't immediately clear.

Lebanese officials have discussed disarming Hezbollah before. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora's government raised the subject after Syria ended its occupation of Lebanon last year.

But Hezbollah refused, saying the Lebanese army was too weak to repel an Israeli attack. On Monday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed victory over Israel and said it was the wrong time to discuss handing over weapons.

A Lebanese Cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday to prepare for Lebanese army deployment was postponed. Hezbollah officials said they wouldn't discuss disarmament while fighting was ongoing.

Since Sunday, Lebanese officials have been meeting behind closed doors with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite Muslim who has been negotiating for Hezbollah. Officials said a compromise could be reached as early as today.

One Cabinet member with knowledge of the discussion said the government might agree, as an interim step, to allow Hezbollah to keep weapons in southern Lebanon as long as they were out of view, weren't used and didn't threaten the army's hold on security.

Publicly, Mohamed Shatah, senior adviser to Saniora, said the government was considering asking Hezbollah to transport their weapons north of the Litani River or hand some of them over to the army.

The government's policy calls for the "melting away" of Hezbollah's armed wing, Shatah said, while its extensive political and social work in the south would continue.

Thousands of Lebanese families again lined the roads leading south, heeding a call from Hezbollah that they immediately return to their often-shattered villages. Leaflets dropped by Israeli aircraft warned them to stay away because they might end up bombing the area again, but cars loaded with children and household belongings streamed down the coastal road.

Hezbollah activists provided money for the trip to many refugees leaving centers around the country. In his televised talk, Nasrallah promised they also would receive money on the spot to help them rebuild their homes, starting an immediate aid program for displaced people while the government was still holding meetings and appealing for funds.

In the south, where yellow Hezbollah flags waved as residents returned, many residents insisted that Hezbollah would never lay down its weapons, even as they stared at the rubble of their homes in devastated border villages like Ayta Al-Shaab.

"Before Hezbollah existed, the Israeli soldiers came to shoot us and bomb us," said Mohammed Srour, 55. "Hezbollah defended us. What can the Lebanese army do?"

But in the same village, in a flower shop reduced to shambles, Itas Awati had a different view. "What is winning? This destruction?" she asked.

Her husband, Moussa Mansour, was ready to say goodbye to an armed Hezbollah. "I want the Lebanese army to come here and be strong so no one can come here," he said. "No militia and no Israelis."

Contributing to this report was Leila Fadel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Ayta Al-Shaab, Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald in Jerusalem and Dion Nissenbaum in Kiryat Shemona, Israel. Additional information from the Washington Post.