With its first contingent of 800 peacekeeping troops due to reach Lebanon today, Italy is basking in general international praise for its foreign policy that has few precedents since its emergence as a western democracy in the late 1940s.

But at home there are misgivings about whether Italy's centre-left government is overplaying its hand and being less than frank about the full range of motives behind its unusually prominent role in the Lebanon crisis. "We are facing a scenario like that which led up to the outbreak of the first world war," said Daniele Capezzone of the radical Rose in the Fist party, a member of Italy's ruling coalition.