BEIRUT: The government must work toward definitively delineating the border with Syria, Robert Watkins, United Nations Resident Coordinator for Lebanon, said Wednesday.

In an interview with The Daily Star ahead of U.N. Day next Monday, Watkins said that the recent events on the Syrian-Lebanon border had highlighted the need for the full implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, part of which was the demarcation of Lebanon’s international borders.

A Syrian-Lebanese man was shot dead by Syrian troops on the Lebanese side of the border Tuesday, according to a security source, and a Syrian farmer was also shot dead by Syrian troops on the Lebanese side in early October, also near the Bekaa border town of Arsal.

Several other incursions by the Syrian Army have led residents to complain of insufficient border protection by the Lebanese authorities.

Watkins, also Deputy Special Coordinator for the country, said that while Interior Minister Marwan Charbel has assured him the government is looking seriously into the delineation issue, a coherent strategy has yet to be adopted by the government due to the “sensitivity of the issue.”

The U.N. in Lebanon, Watkins said, believes it is “extremely important, not only to develop a strategy on managing the borders but in delineating and delimiting the borders so that everyone knows where the border is.”

“Part of the problem with these recent alleged incursions,” he added, was that sometimes there was ambiguity “about whether they crossed the border or not. As long as you don’t have a border to find it’s hard to actually say that someone’s crossed the border.”

Aside from security concerns, Watkins said that the ongoing civil unrest in Syria, which the U.N. says has now claimed at least 3,000 lives, was having clear consequences in Lebanon, from economic ramifications to refugees entering the country. There are currently over 3,100 registered Syrian refugees in north Lebanon.

While the Syria issue remains a politically divisive issue in Lebanon, Watkins is assured that Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government is taking steps to limit any negative effects on the country.

He believes all parties are “very concerned about the events and especially concerned about them spilling over to Lebanon,” and is adamant that “everyone has an interest in maintaining some sort of stability” in Damascus, not just for the sake of Syrians, but for the Lebanese also.

Watkins said that while Syrian President Bashar Assad has spoken of being committed to reform, there has as yet been no evidence of it and warned that “The longer he takes to undertake those reforms the longer the security situation will continue to deteriorate.”

More broadly, Watkins believes this year’s “Arab Spring,” encompassing revolutions and uprisings across the region, has already become a defining era for the United Nations, in terms of the work it carries out.

While the 1960s and 1970s became characterized as a global “wave” of decolonization, followed by a period of polarized politics during the Cold War era, and the following break up of the Soviet Union, Watkins believes the overwhelming challenge for the U.N. in today’s world to be the collapse of entrenched regimes in the Middle East and North Africa.

The organization, created in 1945 at the end of World War II to replace the League of Nations, is now focused on how best to help ensure that transitions of power across the region remain peaceful transitions, Watkins said.

In country-specific terms, Watkins said he was confident of the government paying its 49 percent share of funding to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

While the Cabinet is split on the issue, public statements by Mikati and President Michel Sleiman that they want Lebanon to pay its share have assured Watkins the issue will be settled positively.

“It’s up to the government to decide what mechanism it uses,” to pay its share, Watkins said. “The only issue is that it’s part of the country’s commitments … And we expect Lebanon to respect that commitment.”

In regards to the proceedings of the trial itself, Watkins has good faith that the Lebanese government has made all efforts to locate the four Hezbollah members accused by the court.

The STL announced Monday that it had asked its Trials Chamber to begin in absentia proceedings against the four accused, after efforts to locate the men, and an invitation to turn themselves in, proved fruitless.

“I have met personally with Gen. Ashraf Rifi [head of the Internal Security Forces] and Gen. Jean Kahwagi [Lebanese Armed Forces commander] and they have made commitments that they will do whatever they can to identify and locate these people,” Watkins said. But, he conceded, “I understand that they face challenges in identifying people who may no longer be in the country,” people who, he added, may no longer even be alive.

On reports in local media Thursday that security sources had revealed Hezbollah was prepared for an imminent attack from Israel, Watkins said that in the eight months he has been in the country, “they say that just about every week.

“The threats of a war are always there; it’s not to diminish them, it’s just to ask whether one week we are closer to a war than another week … I don’t see anything that has changed in the last week that would make those threats more credible,” he added.

In relation to the recent announcement that the U.N.’s regional office, ESCWA, will move location from Downtown Beirut, Watkins said that this was not in response to any specific threat.

After an attack on U.N. offices in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, left 27 dead in August, a worldwide security review was carried out and due to its location, the roads surrounding it, and its construction material, the ESCWA buildings were found to be the most vulnerable U.N. building in Lebanon, Watkins said.

So while “vulnerabilities were the same, the threat was considered to have increased in light of this attack in Abuja,” he said. The roads around the ESCWA building were originally closed earlier this month, following the review, but have now been re-opened during non-office hours to minimize disruption to Beirut residents.

Recent bomb threats against the building in which another U.N. agency is located in Beirut could have been meant for any of the companies housed within the building, and not necessarily the organization, Watkins said.