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NEW YORK CITY: The future of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which governs the ceasefire and peacekeeping framework between Lebanon and Israel, would be at risk without the continuing presence of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, the UN’s top peacekeeper warned on Thursday.

Jean Pierre Lacroix, the organization’s head of peacekeeping operations, expressed his deep concern during a press conference following visits to Lebanon and Syria. He told Arab News he would be “very, very worried” about the future of the resolution if UNIFIL was withdrawn.

“UNIFIL is not an end in itself, and UNIFIL is not something standalone,” he said. “It’s a tool for supporting implementation of Resolution 1701, so the two are inextricably linked.

“I would be very, very worried about the future of Resolution 1701 if there is no UNIFIL on the ground to support the implementation of that resolution.”

UNIFIL, established in 2006 to monitor the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel and prevent hostilities in Lebanon’s volatile southern border region, continues to play a crucial role in providing support for the Lebanese army presence in areas south of the Litani River.

The peacekeepers assist in tasks such as mine clearance and rehabilitation efforts, serve as liaisons between Lebanese and Israeli forces, and help with deconfliction efforts.

Despite progress in enforcing the provisions of the resolution, Lacroix said that violations persist and more work is needed to ensure it is fully implemented.

During his trip, Lacroix met senior Lebanese officials, including President Joseph Aoun, the prime minister, the speaker of the parliament, and the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. All of them, he said, reiterated the critical need for UNIFIL to maintain its presence in the country, and Lebanese authorities have formally asked the Security Council to extend the mission’s mandate.

However, UNIFIL faces severe financial constraints. Lacroix said contingency planning is underway amid liquidity shortfalls and uncertainties about the funding commitments of UN member states, particularly in light of potential US opposition to extension of the mandate.

“To the best of my knowledge, there is no final position expressed by Israel or the United States,” he said in response to reports of possible opposition to the continued deployment of UNIFIL. “But we expect consistency from member states; they give mandates and then are expected to pay on time and in full.”

Lacroix stressed that in the absence of UNIFIL, practical and symbolic support for Resolution 1701 would erode, potentially escalating tensions in a region where stability remains fragile.

“The interlocutors in Lebanon were concerned and expressed the need for UNIFIL’s presence to help mitigate and reduce tensions that remain quite high in the region,” he said.

The Security Council is scheduled to review UNIFIL’s mandate in August. The mission currently comprises about 10,000 troops from more than 40 countries.

BEIRUT: The head of a UN investigative commission on Friday called commitments made by the new authorities in Syria to protect the rights of minorities “encouraging” but said attacks have continued on members of the Alawite sect in the months since a major outbreak of sectarian violence on Syria’s coast.

Paulo Pinheiro, the head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that the current Syrian government — led by Islamist former insurgents who ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad — had given his team “unfettered access” to the coast and to witnesses of the violence and victims’ families.

“Disturbingly, reports continue to circulate of ongoing killings and arbitrary arrests of members of the Alawite community, as well as the confiscation of the property of those who fled the March violence,” he said.

Pinheiro’s commission also “documented abductions by unknown individuals of at least six Alawite women this spring in several Syrian governorates,” two of whom remain missing, and has received “credible reports of more abductions,” he said.

Pinheiro also called on authorities to put in place more protections for places of worship after Sunday’s suicide bombing attack on a church outside of Damascus. The attack, which killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more, was the first of its kind to take place in the Syrian capital in years.

The Syrian government has said that the perpetrators belonged to a cell of the Daesh group and that they thwarted a subsequent attempt to target a Shiite shrine in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb in Damascus.

“Attacks on places of worship are outrageous and unacceptable,” Pinheiro said. “The authorities must ensure the protection of places of worship and threatened communities and ensure that perpetrators and enablers are held accountable.”

Assad was deposed in a lightning rebel offensive in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war.

In March, hundreds of civilians, most of them from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs, were killed in revenge attacks after clashes broke out between pro-Assad armed groups and the new government security forces on the Syrian coast.

Pinheiro said his commission had documented scattered “revenge attacks” that happened before that, including killings in several villages in Hama and Homs provinces in late January in which men who had handed over their weapons under a “settlement” process set up for former soldiers and members of security forces under Assad, believing that they would be granted an amnesty in exchange for disarmament, were then “ill-treated and executed.”

He praised the interim government’s formation of a body tasked with investigating the attacks on the coast and said government officials had told his team that “dozens of alleged perpetrators” were arrested.

Pinheiro said the government needs to carry out a “reform and vetting program” as it integrates a patchwork of former rebel factions into a new army and security services and enact “concrete policies to put an end to Syria’s entrenched cycles of violence and revenge, in a context where heightened tensions and sectarian divisions have been reignited.”