By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, April 18 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council has authorized a mission to check on reports of arms smuggling from Syria to Lebanon, which Britain said on Wednesday could trigger another crisis.

The council, in a statement late on Tuesday, agreed with a proposal by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to send an independent mission "to fully assess the monitoring of the border" and make recommendations.

"It's important because of the message we're sending to Lebanon, what we're saying about the importance of trying to look at the border, the land border with Syria and see what arrangements can be put in place there," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters.

"Clearly quite a lot of material has come of such a sensitivity that it could provoke another crisis," said Jones Parry, the current Security Council president.

The council's statement urged all countries in the region to enforce its ban on arms going to anyone but the government, including the Islamic militant group Hezbollah based in southern Lebanon.

The Beirut government reported a truckload of illegal arms on Feb. 8 and U.N. officials have said there were other examples since then of weapons supplied by Iran and reaching Hezbollah over the Syrian border.

Ban said earlier he would raise the situation in Lebanon with Syrian officials, including President Bashar al-Assad, when he visits Damascus on April 24.

The council's statement also expressed "deep concern" at Israeli violations of Lebanese air space" and noted with "profound concern" there had been no progress on the return of two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah last July.

The seizure of the soldiers triggered last summer's 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Lebanese government has been engaged in a power struggle since November between the pro-Western prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and the pro-Syrian Hezbollah, the largest opposition group.

At the heart of the dispute is an international tribunal to prosecute the killers of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, an opponent of Syria, and other political assassinations.

The cabinet approved plans for the court, drawn up with the United Nations, but the parliamentary leader, Nabih Berri, has refused to call the legislature into session to ratify it.

The top U.N. legal affairs counsel, Nicholas Michel, is currently in Lebanon in a last ditch effort to get a consensus on the court. If he fails, Siniora would have to write a formal letter asking the Security Council to set up the court, Jones Parry said.

"The ultimate fallback would be a Chapter 7 resolution," Jones Parry said in reference to a provision in the U.N. Charter that makes council decisions mandatory.

"But that is not something that would be entered into lightly. So we need to be absolutely sure that it was at the behest of the Lebanese and that all efforts in the Lebanon had failed," he said.

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