UNITED NATIONS — While the United Nations is pushing for French troops to form the “backbone” of an international force in Lebanon, Paris is “cautious”about sending its military to help Lebanon’s army take control of the south and disarm Hezbollah, Turtle Bay and French officials said yesterday.

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, is scheduled to fly to New York today to urge a quick formation of a U.N. force to deploy to southern Lebanon as the Israeli military withdraws from the area. The force should comprise up to 15,000 troops, as called for in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.

Facing a new, militant tone from Damascus and Tehran — as well as a Beirut government that is too weak to confront the strengthened Hezbollah — several countries are hesitant about sending soldiers. None had pledged any troops as of yesterday.

A French official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record said that, contrary to previous reports, President Chirac has yet to make a decision on sending any French troops to Lebanon.

Seventeen-hundred French troops are on ships near Lebanon and waiting to be deployed, but while Paris sees the importance of strengthening Prime Minister Siniora’s government, it is not ready to instruct its soldiers to go to southern Lebanon, the official said. Recent statements from the region have not helped the situation, he added.

Speaking in Damascus yesterday, President Assad said America’s plan to change the Middle East is an “illusion.”

If Israel fails to negotiate, he added, “resistance is the only way” to regain Arab “rights” such as the Golan Heights. Mr. Assad said the recent war “was more failure for Israel, its allies and masters.”

In Tehran, President Ahmadinejad said his country favors a new Middle East without Britain, America, and “the occupying Zionist regime,” according to IRNA. “They thought that they can eliminate Hezbollah through aggression on Lebanon, but to no avail,” he said. “Nations in the Middle East are awakened and are making headway to victory through reliance on God.”

Yesterday, Lebanon’s army was reportedly ready to deploy north of the Litani River, on the edge of the Hezbollah-controlled zone, but according to the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, Beirut’s new plan is to allow the Shiite terrorist group to remain armed, with its weapons concealed.

Such a plan would violate the spirit of last Friday’s Security Council resolution, which the American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said envisioned “the effective control, from a security point of view, over southern Lebanon by the government of Lebanon. And that means that, to prevent arms, as Hezbollah’s, from reappearing.”

At the United Nations, the deputy chief of the peacekeeping department, Hedi Anabi, said he hoped to see troops deployed quickly to avoid more fighting in southern Lebanon.

“We hope that there can be an initial deployment up to 3,500 troops within 10 days to two weeks that would be ideal to help consolidate the cessation of hostilities and start the process of [Israeli] withdrawing and deployment of the Lebanese forces,” Mr. Anabi said.

Some potential troop contributors, however, expressed doubt about the U.N. leadership. “A mission under the U.N. command creates a bag of problems,” Italy’s liaison to foreign military expeditions, General Fabrizio Castagnetti, said in an interview with Corriere della Sera. In the past, U.N.-led forces “proved to be a failure, in some cases a total disaster,” he said. Field commanders need to consult the “elephantine bureaucracy” of the United Nations and are unable to “take decisions without consulting the glass building,” he said.

A U.N. peacekeeping department official who briefed reporters yesterday on condition of anonymity said the Lebanese army, with the help of a strengthened United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, needed to create a demilitarized zone where “there will be no weapons in sight” between the Litani River and the border known as the blue line.

The official acknowledged that forming the new force has been difficult. France, he said, does not want to be the leader and is trying to assure local powers that the force will be U.N.-led. “The French would like to see what [other countries] would do,” the official said. “The others would like to see what the French would do.”

In Paris, he added, politicians are eager to send troops, but “the military is more cautious than the politicians.”

But the United Nations is pushing for the French contingent to show leadership. “We will be very happy if France will provide significant contribution that will be the backbone of the enhanced force,” Mr. Anabi said.