About five weeks after ceasefire agreement came into force, Lebanese forces begin deploying along border with Israel. UNIFIL commander expresses his optimism that IDF soldiers' withdrawal will be completed by end of September.

Lebanese army soldiers on Saturday morning took up posts along the border with Israel . The Lebanese soldiers were accompanied by soldiers from the United Nations' multinational force.

United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon Commander Alain Pellegrini expressed his optimism that the Israel Defense Forces' withdrawal from southern Lebanon would be completed by the end of next weekend.

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon — France is poised to dispatch hundreds of troops today to support the international peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, confronting painful memories of the deadly 1983 bombing in Beirut and concerns about more violence in the next few months.

The French are contributing the second-largest contingent to the beefed-up U.N. force assigned to uphold the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah militants. France also will command the force until early next year, when Italy is to take over.

Some 900 French troops who have been staying at a temporary camp outside Beirut are to begin moving today to encampments south of the Litani River, where the Israeli army is pulling out. They will join hundreds of troops from Italy, Spain, India and Ghana — as well as other French forces already in the area.

Left: A French U.N. peacekeeper rides past a billboard showing Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, left, and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon on Sunday.

BEIRUT—Thirteen French tanks, the most powerful armour ever deployed by a United Nations peacekeeping force, rolled ashore yesterday, beefing up a mission aimed at helping cement an uneasy ceasefire in Lebanon.

But some European officials are concerned international peacekeepers will be at best ineffective and at worst humiliated if hostilities flare between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops.

Scores of blue-helmeted French troops transferred the Leclerc tanks, AUF-1 artillery cannons, two high-tech Cobra radar trucks and dozens of armoured vehicles and transport trucks from a cargo ship in Beirut's port. The port reopened Friday after a nearly two-month Israeli blockade.