YANTA, Lebanon - The brown sedan kicks up dirt as it speeds along the small trail and crosses the border from Syria with no security forces in sight — another reminder how hard it will be for Lebanon to keep weapons from being smuggled to rearm Hezbollah.

"He is bringing cheap petrol from Syria," the 62-year-old father of five guessed.

But now the issue has become more serious.

Policing the border to stop the illegal flow of arms to Hezbollah through Syria is the next priority for the Lebanese government and its Western backers as they press ahead with the implementation of a U.N. resolution that ended the 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel .

But Israel, which repeatedly struck the border area during the war, says it must be done and has threatened to attack suspected convoys coming into Lebanon from Syria.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran , had for years received its arms shipments through official border crossings with Syria. That continued, albeit with some difficulty, after international pressure forced Syria to end its 29-year occupation of Lebanon last year.

"Some of the more delicate and small hardware could be smuggled through the airport," said Lebanese analyst Helmi Moussa of the leftist As-Safir daily. "But there is no substitute for the overland arms shipments from Syria."

Trenches as deep as 15 feet were recently dug on some of the bigger smuggling routes to prevent their use, the officials said. The army has also stepped up patrols along the border.

But getting complete control over what comes across from Syria will be difficult.

"Here, you have small trucks and mules doing the cross-border run," said Mohammed Yassin, a Lebanese who runs a trucking business in the border village of Majdil Anjar. "The huge trucks are used across the northern border."

Hezbollah leaders so far have dismissed the idea that closer scrutiny of the border will hurt their arsenal. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted before the war that his group had "more than 12,000 rockets." After the war, he said less than 50 percent had been used and that his earlier figure could have been conservative.

Israel says it destroyed half of Hezbollah‘s rocket capabilities.

Nasrallah‘s second-in-command, however, said in a recent interview that Hezbollah‘s present arsenal could be as much as 90 percent of what it was before the war. The group is in no hurry to replace the rockets it fired into Israel, he said.

"I don‘t think the question of arms is a problem for us," Naim Qassim told the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat. "They are tiring themselves with deployments on the border ... their methods will not deter the resistance."

Such statements could, however, be just an attempt to downplay a serious threat.

Many believe the monthlong fight against Israel must have chipped off a large chunk of Hezbollah‘s arsenal — primarily assault rifles, rifle propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and mortars. They note the group is almost entirely dependent on assistance from Syria and Iran.

The land border is not the only issue, of course: Smuggling also has occurred by sea and air. Under the cease-fire agreement, Lebanon‘s Mediterranean coastline and only international airport will be monitored by European peacekeepers. (AP)