Outgoing UNIFIL Chief Meets with Envoys of Troop Contributing Countries, Major Powers and EU

UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major-General Luciano Portolano on Monday held his last meeting before leaving his post next month with ambassadors of UNIFIL Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs), five Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council, and the European Union Delegation to Lebanon.

In the Beirut meeting with the ambassadors and the Head of Delegation of the European Union to Lebanon, Christina Markus Lassen, Portolano expressed his “sincere gratitude to all troop contributors and other international partners for their support to UNIFIL and him personally during his two years at the helm of the U.N. peacekeeping mission,” a UNIFIL statement said.

Among other things, he outlined UNIFIL's efforts towards “enhancing the capacity of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) through the strategic dialogue process as a vital necessity to strengthen their capacity as well as reiterating the critical importance of continued international support to LAF.”

“In this process, we are working closely with the Office of the U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon, the U.N. agencies in the country and international partners including UNIFIL’s troop contributing countries in exploring the possibility to equip, train and provide assistance to LAF in order to enable it to fulfill its mandated tasks under the U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 (2006),” he said.

The U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Sigrid Kaag, also addressed the meeting.

Portolano also briefed the participants on the situation in the UNIFIL area of operations, noting the “continued calm and stability in the area in the face of an increasingly complex regional security scenario.”

“The success of the Mission is a combination of several important elements working in close coordination: UNIFIL's close partnership with the Lebanese Armed Forces and security agencies, as well as the strong support to the Mission from the Government and local authorities, religious leaders, the people of South Lebanon, the international community and the strong support of the TCCs,” he added.

UNIFIL has more than 10,000 military personnel from 40 countries, including the Maritime Task Force -- the only naval force in peacekeeping operations -- and around 1,000 civilian national and international staff.

The force was created in 1978 to help Lebanon restore government control over southern Lebanon after the Israeli invasion, and it was beefed up in 2006 after the devastating war between Israel and Hizbullah.