Army needs peace to deploy in south

The Lebanese government has said it will send 15,000 troops to the south, but only if Israel withdraws its forces fighting Hizbollah guerillas there.

It wants the troops to deploy alongside an expanded UN peacekeeping force as part of a comprehensive agreement that would eventually extend its control to all Lebanese territory and remove the need for Hizbollah to keep its weapons. The Lebanese army, no match militarily for Hizbollah, let alone Israel, reflects the country's delicate Muslim-Christian balance. It is thus unsuited for use in internal conflicts - it split when a US-backed Lebanese government deployed it against Syrian-backed Muslim militias after Israel's 1982 invasion.

Stitched back together after the Taif agreement that ended the 1975-90 civil war, the army moved into positions vacated by Syrian troops when they withdrew from Lebanon in April 2005.

It is short of combat experience, having fought only brief skirmishes with Islamist militants in northern Lebanon in recent years. Here are the main facts about the Lebanese army:

¤ Size - 35,000 regular soldiers and 7,000 conscripts. This week the army called up an unspecified number of reserves, drawn from soldiers and officers who ended their service in the past five years, ahead of the possible deployment in the south.

¤ Units - Six mechanised brigades, five light brigades, one Republican Guard brigade, one support brigade and one logistics brigade. Also 11 regiments, including one commando and two artillery.

¤ Armour - 60 M-48 US-made tanks, 160 T-55 and T-56 Soviet-made tanks, 1,000 M113 US-made armoured troop carriers.

¤ Air Force - No fixed-wing planes. 23 UH1 US-made helicopters using three bases.

¤ Navy - 10 British-made coastguard boats, two French-built landing vessels and 40 combat support boats. Israeli air strikes have knocked out all naval radar stations.