Spain to send 800-1,000 soldiers to Lebanon

The Spanish government said on Friday that it would send 800-1,000 soldiers to join the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

It would be the country's largest single armed operation overseas.

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told reporters that plans about sending troops to the enlarged UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were agreed upon at meetings between Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and his European counterparts in Brussels earlier in the day.

Plans to send Spanish troops overseas need approval from parliament in line with the National Defense Law, she added.

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1701 early this month, which authorizes an expansion of UNIFIL from its current 1,990-strong force to 15,000 troops in order to monitor the shaky truce between Lebanon's Hezbollah group and Israel following their month-long fighting.

Spain currently has 2,047 troops overseas assigned to missions in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Spain has also contributed 82 police officers to an airborne police operation in the Baltic.

Source: Xinhua