By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, June 26 (Reuters) - Lebanon's border security is largely incapable of preventing arms smuggling from Syria, experts said in a report for the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that recommended a radical overhaul.

In a scathing 46-page report, the team of five independent experts said that during a three-week stay in Lebanon to examine border procedures it had not heard of any weapons being seized, despite widespread reports of illegal shipments.

The Security Council authorized the mission in April because of what it has described as "mounting information" of arms transfers, many of them reportedly destined for Lebanon's anti-government Hezbollah group. U.N. officials have cited both Israel and the Lebanese army for the reports of smuggling.

The team's mandate was to probe Lebanon's monitoring system along its 320-km (200-mile) border with Syria, not to uncover actual cases of arms smuggling. It did not visit Syria, which has denied involvement in any illegal transfers.

The report, submitted to Security Council members on Tuesday, concluded "that the present state of border security was insufficient to prevent smuggling, in particular the smuggling of arms, to any significant extent".

"Not a single on-border or near-border seizure of smuggled arms has been documented to the team," it added.

Poor layout of border control points and lack of fixed procedures resulted in "non-controllable passengers, vehicles and cargo flow within the facilities," the report said.

UNCHECKED TRAILS

The Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have strongly backed Lebanon's government despite its stand-off with the mainly pro-Syrian opposition, led by Hezbollah. Last month, the council approved a special tribunal to try the suspected killers of former anti-Syrian Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Tuesday's report is likely to be seen as another move by the world body to bolster government authority and clamp down on Lebanese and Palestinian guerrilla forces in Lebanon.

The report by experts from Denmark, Algeria, Germany, Jamaica and Switzerland largely avoided comment on the touchy issue of Lebanese-Syrian relations and suggested that Lebanese border officials set up cooperation with Syrian counterparts.

The experts, who visited all four official land border points as well as Beirut airport and seaport, acknowledged the difficulty of monitoring numerous unchecked cross-border trails and pathways that made large-scale smuggling easy.

But it said it had been told in Lebanon that "political sympathies, family/clan connections or traditional corruption" were also to blame for what it called a "worrying lack of performance" by border authorities.

Poor coordination between the four agencies involved in border control was a further factor, said the team headed by Denmark's Lasse Christensen.

It recommended that Lebanon establish a multi-agency mobile force focusing on arms smuggling that would be able to rapidly intercept weapons and would have an intelligence unit that could combine information from different agencies.

International security experts should bolster the force, while a dedicated border guard agency should eventually be created, it said.

Official crossing points should be moved closer to the actual border, as many unofficial cross-border roads as possible should be blocked, and border staff should receive improved training and equipment, it added.

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