Italian PM: We hope UNIFIL will be mandated to monitor Lebanese-Syrian border

 

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi expressed his belief that the UNIFIL troops in South Lebanon are not in danger.

 

“As time goes by, UNIFIL is proving its important role in persevering stability,” Prodi told the French weekly Le Figaro.

 

“When we decided on the UNIFIL’s mandate, we should have included the monitoring of the Lebanese-Syrian border, but this was not possible because of tensions in the relations between Syria and France,’ he said.

 

“Now, we hope to be able to change this in order to prevent arm smuggling,” Prodi noted.

 

High-level diplomatic contacts between France and Syria resumed on account of the presidential crisis in Lebanon, when French President Nicola Sarkozy discussed the elections with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the phone.