COMPIEGNE (France), Sept 23: Russia intends to send troops to Lebanon, but not as part of the UN peacekeeping force there and only if all parties in the region agree, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.

Moscow is prepared to send ‘a small deployment of engineers to Lebanon’, Mr Putin said after a three-way summit with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Angela Merkel north of Paris.

“We don’t intend to do this within the UNIFIL (UN Interim Force in Lebanon) framework, but rather within a bilateral framework,” he told a joint media conference. Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday there were plans to send 300 military engineers to Lebanon for reconstruction.—AFP