The Israel Defense Forces is training foreign peacekeepers bound for the United Nations force in south Lebanon to neutralize the armaments it left behind during its month-long war against Hezbollah guerrillas this summer, an army officer said Wednesday.

Lieutenant Colonel Amit Tesler, an officer in charge of the military's joint training exercises with foreign armies, said Israeli Engineering Corps sappers trained five Italian army commanders at a base near Tel Aviv for a week in September, responding to a request from the Italian government.

The sappers briefed the Italians on the kinds of mines, artillery shells and cluster bombs the military used during the war, where they could expect to find them and how to dismantle them, Tesler said. He said a group of Spanish peacekeepers is expected in the next month for similar training.

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"We have an interest in making sure that no peacekeeper is hurt," Tesler said.

Hundreds of thousands of cluster bomblets are thought to be left in south Lebanon, lethal remains of the summer war, which was ignited on July 12 when Hezbollah attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two.

More than 850 Lebanese and more than 150 Israelis were killed in the fighting that followed. The UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the fighting greatly expanded UNIFIL, an existing peacekeeping force in south Lebanon since the late 1970s.

Israel has been criticized by the UN and Amnesty International for using cluster bombs, which scatter hundreds of small explosives that remain lethal as long as they are on the ground. Israel has said it used its munitions in accordance with international law, which does not outlaw cluster bombs but maintains they are not to be used in civilian areas.