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A Un ited Nations peacekeeping force will be sent to Lebanon in about a week, Secretary General Kofi Annan said before beginning a visit today to Beirut.

Annan made the comment when he telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert late yesterday, the Israeli government said in a statement. Israel “ascribes great importance to the deployment of the international force on the Syrian-Lebanese border and at the air and maritime entry points into Lebanon,'' Olmert told Annan.

The secretary general will meet Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and other government leaders before he travels to Israel later this week.

European nations agreed Aug. 25 to provide 7 000 soldiers for the force to oversee the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah that ended a monthlong conflict. The UN contingent, which will eventually number 15,000 personnel, will be deployed with a similar number of Lebanese soldiers to act as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel wants UN soldiers sent to Lebanon's border with Syria to prevent weapons reaching Hezbollah fighters.

UN forces will deploy on the Syrian border only if Lebanon requests the move, Annan said Aug. 25. Lebanon's cabinet last week said it wouldn't ask for such a deployment. The Israeli military is maintaining an air and sea blockade of Lebanon that began during the fighting with Hezbollah, a group Israel and the US designate as a terrorist organization.

Security Council resolution 1701, which halted the conflict Aug. 14, puts the Lebanese army, not the UN peacekeepers, in charge of disarming Hezbollah.

The group, which is backed by Syria and Iran, is refusing to lay down its weapons in defiance of UN Resolution 1559, approved in 2004, which calls for the disarming and disbanding of militias in the country.

The US State Department estimates Hezbollah has several thousand fighters and activists and receives about $100 million a year from Iran. The group has been blamed for rocket attacks on Israel, bombings in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 US Marines and 58 French soldiers, and an attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people. Hezbollah denies involvement in the bombings.

Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers in a cross- border raid July 12 sparked the conflict.

Italy has offered to mediate between Israel and Hezbollah for a prisoner swap, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Shiite organization, said yesterday.

“Some contacts happened,'' Nasrallah, 46, told Lebanon's New TV station. “The Italians are trying to get involved in this issue and the United Nations are interested.'' His remarks follow a report yesterday in the state- controlled Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram that the prisoner exchange would occur within two to three weeks under an agreement arranged by Germany. Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Olmert, declined to confirm or deny the report. German Foreign Affairs spokesman Martin Jaeger also declined to confirm or deny the report.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visits Germany today for talks with German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the UN deployment. Germany will contribute to naval forces patrolling the Lebanese coast, Steinmeier said three days ago.

In January 2004, Israel agreed with Hezbollah to free more than 400 prisoners in return for a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three dead soldiers.

Nasrallah said he never expected the kidnapping of the two soldiers would prompt the response it did from Israel. About 1 200 people were killed in Lebanon and 159 died in Israel during the fighting, according to the Lebanese and Israeli governments.

“Had I had a one-percent doubt that the capture would lead to such a war, I would have said `no,' for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military and political reasons,'' Nasrallah said in the interview.

Hezbollah approved the deployment of UN peacekeepers to police the cease-fire because its role won't be to disarm his organization, Nasrallah said.

The group won't breach the cease-fire and will give the Lebanese government time to recover by peaceful means the Shebaa Farms, an area captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 and now claimed by Lebanon with the encouragement of Syria, he said.

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