BRUSSELS: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is pressing for the imposition of a “robust” multinational force to halt the violence in the Middle East and a prominent US columnist has volunteered NATO for the job.

Don’t hold your breath.

Israel will not hear of an intervention force. Washington is not considering it. NATO’s 19 nations have divided sympathies in the conflict, and few — if any — would be prepared to commit troops for such a huge, risky, complex and open-ended mission.

“The proposal for an international peacekeeping force looks less like a real plan than a desperate if noble attempt to solve the insoluble in the Middle East,” said Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Officials at NATO headquarters say there has been no debate on the alliance playing a part to end the bloodshed.

“There is zero talk about it,” said one. “We have not been asked by anyone or by any country to look into it. I don’t see this as being a possibility at all.”

Diplomats said that at most there might conceivably be a role for NATO, much further down the road, in providing protection for peace monitors, as it does now in Macedonia.

The alliance has more than 40,000 peacekeeping troops in the Balkans after the ethnic conflicts of the 1990s, and its military planners may soon be helping Turkey to organise an international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

But it has never considered a role in the Middle East, traditionally regarded as “out of area” for NATO.

“COALITION OF THE WILLING”: Annan appealed to the Security Council on Thursday to authorize a “coalition of the willing” — not organized by the United Nations — to end the violence that has escalated since Israeli troops reoccupied Palestinian areas in the West Bank.