UNITED NATIONS — There is no better indication of how low the ambitions that guided the framers of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 were than the idea that the fundamental problems that led to the war in Lebanon will now be resolved diplomatically in 30 days — by Secretary-General Annan.

After his daily lectures to “all sides,” but mainly Israel, that military means will achieve nothing, Mr. Annan now has a chance to prove that diplomacy led by Mr. International Community himself is more effective. In operative paragraph 10 of the resolution that passed unanimously Friday night, the council “requests” Mr. Annan to become the man with the plan.

There is no decision yet at Turtle Bay’s 38th-floor executive suite, I am told, on what to do with this hot potato. Will Mr. Annan personally go to the region? Will he recruit an internationally recognized figure? Will one of Mr. Annan’s trusted aides, such as his deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, be charged with the task?

Given the chance to end his 10-year tenure with a diplomatic bang, Mr. Annan seems as unprepared for the mission the council has entrusted him with as Israel’s army was, according to its critics, when it went to war.

Resolution 1701 started to unravel yesterday, as the Beirut Cabinet wavered on its pledge to deploy 15,000 Lebanese army troops in the south and as Paris, the projected leader of a yet to be established 15,000-troop “robust” international presence, declared that the new coalition will not disarm Hezbollah by force.

As I write, it is far from clear that the truce Mr. Annan took credit for Saturday will take place at 1 a.m. EDT today. But if it does, the guns will be silenced short of clear military victory for either side, and the truce is therefore sure to be short-lived. If, miraculously, calm lasts until the end of Mr. Annan’s tenure on December 31, the fighting that will erupt shortly after his departure will be the first of the new secretary-general’s problems.

Resolution 1701, however, requires Mr. Annan to do more than just negotiate a truce. It gives him 30 days, in “liaison” with the main powers and the combatants, to develop “proposals” to implement the disarmament of Hezbollah and redraw Lebanon’s borders to counter the terrorist organization’s claim that Shebaa Farms is an Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory.

This claim contradicts Mr. Annan’s previous attempt at drawing Lebanon’s border, but that awkward fact is mentioned nowhere in the resolution. Six years ago, Mr. Annan certified that Israel had withdrawn from all of Lebanon. His answer should now be simple: Read my council-endorsed report, dated June 16, 2000.

Mr. Annan, however, is now much more eager to appease Hezbollah than he was then, and therefore more likely to suggest transferring Shebaa, now controlled by Israel, to an international protectorate that will fly the blue U.N. flag.

This leaves the complex — and more fundamental — issue of disarming Hezbollah. As numerous council resolutions have noted, Lebanon cannot truly be independent or sovereign as long as a Syrian- and Iranian-controlled army operates alongside its own. Mr. Annan is expected to agree with the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, who said yesterday that disarming Hezbollah will be done by “purely political” means. In other words, not at all.

Declawing Hezbollah is the task Israel’s army set itself to achieve when the war began on July 12. Unlike other unauthorized military campaigns launched to impose the council’s will, such as NATO’s air war against Serbia, Israel was given a short leash. After Jerusalem failed to disarm Hezbollah in two weeks, pressure began to mount.

Virtually blind to the fires burning in northern Israel, Mr. Annan and his European followers highlighted the suffering of Lebanon’s civilians. To believe Mr. Annan’s official reports, not a single Hezbollah combatant was killed in this war. Deprived of an instant victory, after a month even Washington and the leadership in Jerusalem lost their military nerve and resorted to diplomacy.

The fact that blue-helmeted troops have failed both Lebanon and Israel as an “interim” force since 1979 has been forgotten completely. So have the diplomatic failures since the Arab League’s 1989 Taif Accord and every Security Council resolution that followed, all of which have failed to achieve any of their goals.

Mr. Annan now has 30 days to come up with a shiny new diplomatic plan. Unlike Israel’s military campaign, his deadline is sure to be extended forever — or until the endless cycle of diplomacy yields to war once more. Except the next one is sure to be much bloodier.