DAMASCUS, July 29: Syria on Saturday slammed international proposals for the deployment of a multinational force in southern Lebanon as ‘an occupation force’ that would do Israel’s job.

“The international force proposed by (US Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice... will occupy southern Lebanon and it, instead of Israel, will be charged with eradicating the Lebanese national resistance,” said an editorial in the official Tishrin daily.

The editor of the government Al-Baath newspaper also slammed the calls for a multinational force and described warnings to Syria and Iran by the United States and Britain as nothing new.

“Leaders on this level ... should have highlighted that the resistance is born out of the terrorism practised by Israel,” editor Elias Mrad said, saying also that international troops would be nothing more than an ‘occupation force’.

World powers are due to discuss the possible force, which would be in addition to the 2,000 UN peacekeeping troops currently deployed, at the United Nations on Monday.

Mr Mrad said warnings from US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to Syria and Iran on Friday were ‘nothing new’.

“The two leaders have turned a blind eye to Israel’s responsibility for the death and destruction in Lebanon,” he said. “(They) have preferred to apply pressure only to Syria and Iran over Hezbollah.”

Mr Blair, meeting Mr Bush on Friday, said both Syria and Iran ‘can either come in and participate as proper and responsible members of the international community, or they will face the risk of increasing confrontation’.

A UN resolution adopted in 2004 calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah, which was created in 1982 after Israel’s all-out invasion of Lebanon.—AFP