BRUSSELS (Reuters) — The prospect of European countries committing troops to a peace force for Lebanon’s border with Israel will depend on solving the conundrum of how to disarm Hizbollah.Without a credible plan to demilitarise the Middle East’s best-armed guerrilla group, peacekeepers from France, Italy or Turkey could rapidly end up as the meat in the sandwich between the Jewish state and the Lebanese Shi’ite militants.

The existing United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been condemned to that role for more than a quarter of a century, losing 257 dead without being able to prevent either guerrilla attacks or Israeli reprisals.

Hizbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, shows no sign of giving up its arsenal of more than 10,000 rockets, some of which it has fired into northern Israel in the past weeks to deadly effect.

Even before Israel struck at Lebanon in retaliation for the kidnapping of two of its soldiers in a cross-border Hizbollah raid, the Beirut government was too weak to disarm the fighters.

Israel seems to have realised it will not be able to destroy much of the well dug-in militia’s weaponry by bombing, shelling or cross-border incursions. Initially reticent, Israeli leaders have now embraced the idea of a robust multilateral force, preferably run by NATO, the US-led defence pact, to patrol a south Lebanon buffer zone.

But NATO sources say the alliance is unlikely to get involved, not least because the United States is unwilling to commit its own forces and other key allies are overstretched.

Tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan and deeply unpopular in the Arab world, Washington has no appetite for a military role in Lebanon, from which it retreated in 1983 after Hizbollah blew up its marine barracks and embassy with huge casualties.

Britain, which has been calling loudly for an international force, has no intention of participating. Its forces have their hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

The Netherlands says it also has too many other commitments.

But France, Italy, Germany, Greece and EU candidate Turkey have voiced conditional willingness to join a stabilisation force in Lebanon if there is a ceasefire, a political agreement and a mandate from the UN Security Council.

French President Jacques Chirac’s record low public approval ratings have rebounded partly due to his active diplomacy in the crisis and Paris may relish a bigger role in its former protectorate without American NATO tutelage.

“The perspective is clear that Hizbollah must be disarmed. But we cannot be perceived too much as carrying forward Israeli interests,” said one EU diplomat who requested anonymity.

EU president Finland and Ireland, traditional providers of UN “blue helmets”, said they would consider the force idea.

For most potential troop contributors, a political solution that tackles the future of Hizbollah will be crucial. A senior EU diplomat said: “It (a stabilisation force) is proving difficult and complicated, both as to its composition and what mandate it should have.

“One of the most difficult areas is the disarmament of Hizbollah. You can only do that with the agreement of Hizbollah, which means that any peace mission cannot be dissociated from the wider political context.”

Hizbollah refuses to give up the arms it used to help end more than 20 years of Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in 2000 but says it wants to negotiate a deal on how best to defend the country. It wants Israel out of the Shebaa Farms, land which it says is Lebanese. The United Nations says it is Syrian. “If the peace force is charged with disarming Hizbollah, this can create the possibility of a clash between UN forces and Hizbollah,” a Turkish official said.

A NATO source expressed similar misgivings about what an international force would have to do and how it could avoid a fresh escalation of fighting in a few months’ time.

Foreign ministers of the major power “contact group” on Lebanon, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will discuss a potential global political settlement as well as security guarantees at a meeting in Rome on Wednesday.

But with Western nations locked in twin standoffs with Iran over its nuclear programme and Syria over its alleged role in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, it is not clear what levers they can use to persuade Hizbollah to lay down its arms.

If it is not disarmed, diplomats say it is probably only a matter of time before Hizbollah lobs rockets over the new force’s heads into Israel or tries to infiltrate the border again, given its ideology, track-record and backers.

One EU diplomat said his private nightmare was that European countries could send potential hostages who could be killed or kidnapped if the standoffs with Tehran and Damascus degenerated.