São Paulo – The Brazilian ministries of Defence and Foreign Relations informed this Thursday (29) that Brazil is going to send a Navy vessel with up to 300 crew members, equipped with an aircraft, to integrate the fleet of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil). The sending of the vessel, which is going to run the fleet, was authorized last Wednesday (28) by the National Congress.
According to joint statement issued by the two ministries, the ship will leave to Lebanon on October 4. There, it will join three other ships from Germany, two from Bangladesh, one from Greece, another one from Turkey, and one from Indonesia.
The Unifil Maritime Task Force was created by the resolution 1701, from 2006, of the UN Security Council, and according to the two ministries it aims to monitor traffic along the Lebanese coast, prevent arms trafficking, and train the Arab country’s Navy personnel in the Arab country.
Although the Brazilian ship is heading to Lebanon shortly, a Brazilian Navy official, the counter admiral Luiz Henrique Caroli, has been running the fleet since February. The occasion marked the start of Brazilian participation at Unifil, firstly with four officials and four soldiers.
According to the Brazilian government, “the initiative shows the Brazilian commitment to promoting peace in the Middle East.” This is the first UN peace mission with a naval fleet, according to the statement.
Unifil was established by the resolution 425 of the UN Security Council, from 1978, with the objective of supervising the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon. In practice, however, Israel maintained the Lebanese South occupied up until the year 2000.
After the Israeli attack on the South of the Arab country, in 2006, which caused the death of 1,500 people, the council approved resolution 1701, extending Unifil’s mandate and awarding it the complementary objectives of monitoring the end of hostilities and guaranteeing access of humanitarian aid and the return of refugees, which number at around 900,000.
According to the statement, Unifil counts on 11,746 officials, 351 foreign civilian personnel and 656 local civilians. The naval fleet counts on 800-strong crew.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
