Brits bedrijf gaat EU-diplomaten in Beirut beveiligen (en)

BRUSSELS - The EU foreign service has hired British firm G4S to guard its diplomats in Lebanon, amid increasing sectarian violence.

The company, the world's largest private security firm, is to take over from the EU's current contractor, Argus, a small French company registered in Cyprus, on 1 September.

The EU will pay G4S between €3 million and €5 million over the next four years.

Its job will be to look after the EU building in Achrafieh, a Christian district in downtown Beirut, to guard the homes of the 20-or-so expat staff who work there and to provide bodyguards for when they travel round or when EU visitors come to town.

The Argus-G4S handover comes at a time of escalating security problems.

Recent months have seen deadly clashes, including in Beirut itself, between Lebanese Sunni Muslims allied with rebels in neighbouring Syria and Lebanese Shia Muslims who back the Syrian regime.

In the latest incident, on Friday (9 August), a Lebanese Shia Muslim group calling itself Zuwwar al-Imam Rida kidnapped two Turkish pilots on the main road from Beirut's airport.

For its part, the EU last month appeared to take sides by designating the military wing of Hezbollah, the largest Shia Muslim group in Lebanon, as a terrorist entity.

A Hezbollah-linked newspaper, Al Akhbar, later said EU soldiers in Unifil, the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, should see themselves as "operating behind enemy lines."

Two security contacts, who asked not to be named, told EUobserver the EU envoy in Lebanon, Angelina Eichhorst, also received personal threats.

But a spokesman for the European External Action Service (EEAS), Michael Mann, said he "cannot confirm" the information.

Meanwhile, G4S itself has a problematic image in the Arab world.

Libya last year denied it permission to guard EU diplomats in the country in part because G4S works for two Israeli detention centres, the Ofer prison and the SJ district police station, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But Mann said the EU is not concerned about G4S' Israeli links.

Olaf looks at Libya

G4S also lost the Libya job because the EU signed the contract despite the fact the firm had no Libyan permit.

The decision broke the EU's own tender rules and annoyed the Libyans, who said it violated their sovereignty.

The EU's anti-fraud office, Olaf, is currently investigating how come EU officials made the botched decision.

Olaf does not comment on ongoing probes.

But Mann told this website: "G4S Lebanon are not under any investigation and we have not been advised by Olaf of any reason not to allow G4S to tender [for other EU work]."

A spokesman for G4S, Piers Zangana, noted that, in terms of Lebanon, it already has "valid licences" for the EU contract.

Second chance?

The British firm now has a second chance to enter the Libyan market under the EU flag.

The EEAS on Thursday published a new tender for bodyguards in Libya, in a deal worth between €12 million and €15 million.

Unlike the Lebanon tender, and unlike most EU security tenders, the Libya tender does not stipulate that candidates must be registered as a security company in Libya or hold a Libyan permit in order to be eligible.

In what looks like a nod to last year's events, it does say, however: "The contracting authority reserves the right to revoke its award of the contract in the case that the authorities in the country of deployment object to the presence of the selected contractor."

If G4S gets Libya, it will again push out Argus, which currently protects EU staff in the country.