Nick Blanford, Times correspondent in Lebanon, says that the under-trained and under-equipped Lebanese army will be adequate to police a ceasefire only as long as Hezbollah is willing to let it

"There is a feeling in Lebanon that the army is almost an extension of Hezbollah. The general assumption is that if it was ever sent against Hezbollah, the army would split with more than half refusing to fight.

"It is a smallish force, about 40,000 strong, and its battalions and brigades are of mixed composition from Lebanon's various sects. The bulk, however - about 60 per cent, at a guesstimate, as no official figures exist - are Shia, like Hezbollah. That compares to the 35-40 per cent of Shia Muslims in the population in general.

"It is lightly armed, with a mix of US and Soviet bloc weaponry, and until now it has played an internal, almost a policing role in Lebanese affairs, to maintain the country's internal stability since the end of the civil war in 1990. If there is a big demonstration in Beirut, for example, it is likely to be the army which patrols it rather than the police.

"It wasn't the Lebanese army which was fighting the Israeli occupation until May 2000 - that was Hezbollah's role, though the army provided limited back-up to Hezbollah.

"The Americans, French and British are now trying to build up the Lebanese army, building it more into a national defence force. During the 1990s it was the Syrians who were effectively controlling the country and providing military training in Damascus.

"President Emile Lahoud, who was the head of the army until his election in 1998, is Syria's staunchest ally here, and despite the Syrian army's departure from Lebanon last year that connection remains and makes some uneasy.

"A desire to counteract that influence is one of the reasons that the US and France are now offering military training for Lebanese officers. They aim to turn it into a rapid reaction force, improving its communications and making it highly mobile, with more troop helicopters, trucks and jeeps.

"The idea is that that it could patrol the very porous border between Lebanon and Syria, to prevent smuggling and the transit of militants moving to and fro. It would use helicopters to get to the scenes of clashes quickly.

"Whether it could be effective in policing a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is entirely a matter of whether there is political agreement for this to happen. If Hezbollah has agreed not to attack Israel, it doesn't matter who is down on the border - the presence of troops would be almost a PR stunt.

"But if Hezbollah rejected the idea of a ceasefire, it wouldn't matter if it was the Lebanese army down there or a UN peacekeeping force - there is nothing that would stop them from fighting.

"Hezbollah's two Cabinet ministers have said that they don't mind if the Lebanese army deploys there, which signals Hezbollah is on board with this. Basically, it suggests that it will happen and the border will remain calm.

"The more difficult step will be disarming Hezbollah. No-one is proposing to do this by force, even the US and Israel. So the next question is whether Hezbollah will redeploy to the border, or come up with a compromise deal to co-operate with the Lebanese army but keep its own chain of command. There are all kinds of ways of fixing this to make it acceptable to all parties, but that is further down the line."

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