Italy faces calls for Lebanon pullout after killing
Source: Reuters
By Phil Stewart ROME, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Italy's government faced opposition pressure on Wednesday to withdraw from a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon after the assassination of a cabinet minister stoked fears of a surge in factional bloodshed. The government said Italy's more than 2,000 forces had tightened security precautions following Tuesday's murder of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, the sixth anti-Syrian politician killed in nearly two years. Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema acknowledged he was "truly very worried" and called on allies to do more to bolster Lebanon's Western-backed government. "The assassination of Gemayel is a dramatic sign in the effort to destabilise the country," D'Alema told reporters in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where he is on a visit. Some politicians from the centre right, which lost April polls, said Italy's troops should pull out of Lebanon or at least be given a stronger and clearer mandate. Former Defence Minister Antonio Martino said Rome had made a "mistake" by joining the U.N. peacekeeping mission, which it is set to lead starting next year. "I think that our soldiers should leave Lebanon -- in an elegant way, without running away, because what's done is done and they clearly can't leave saying we were wrong," he told right-wing newspaper Il Giornale. "But it was a very clear mistake to send them there. And any sensible person should know that," said Martino, who supervised the deployment of thousands of Italian troops to Iraq. D'Alema responded that "on the contrary, the worsening of the situation requires a stronger political presence beside the military one." The Lebanon mission is a cornerstone of Italy's foreign policy championed by new centre-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi to end a war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. It is meant to strengthen Lebanon's army and state control of southern Lebanon, something which would become increasingly difficult in the face of a feared surge in violence and government instability following Gemayel's killing. "Our boys' mission becomes more risky every day ... Civil war may be around the corner," said Isabella Bertolini of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. Rocco Buttiglione, head of the opposition centrist UDC party and a former Berlusconi minister, said the government needed to review whether Italian troops had the training for such a dangerous mission. Even Italy's most prominent left-leaning newspaper voiced its concern, pointing out that Lebanon's government had been weakened by killings and recent resignations of six mostly Shi'ite Muslim ministers. The death or resignation of two more ministers would now bring down Siniora's government. "If the government is crippled by the resignations and killings, if it is challenged by half the population, if it does not control a part of the armed forces, then it is a reduced counterpart," wrote La Repubblica. "And this is a serious problem for the Blue Helmets (U.N. forces)."
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