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March 12, 2005

Assad pledges full withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon: UN
by Roueida Mabardi

z11_assad_larsen.jpg (35249 bytes)

DAMASCUS - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to remove all his military and intelligence personnel from Lebanon, a UN envoy said Saturday, adding that details of a timetable would be given to the UN secretary general next week.

"The president has committed to withdrawing all troops and intelligence services from Lebanon in fulfillment of Security Council Resolution 1559," envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said in a statement after talks with Assad in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

"I will present to Mr (UN Secretary General Kofi) Annan further details of the timetable for a complete Syrian pullout from Lebanon on my arrival in New York early next week."

But he did not disclose a timeframe for the final phase of what he said would be a two-stage maneuver.
For its part, the Syrian state news agency SANA confirmed that an "understanding" had been reached to withdraw the troops, though it did not mention the intelligence personnel.

"The two parties reached an understanding under which Syrian forces will withdraw from Lebanon in two stages," SANA said, without giving a date for the final step.

"In a first stage, all Syrian forces will redeploy to the Bekaa Valley before the end of March, and a good part of those forces will re-enter Syria.

In a second stage, the remaining forces will withdraw completely."

Annan had sent Roed-Larsen to secure a firm date for a complete pullout by Syria, which has held political and military sway over its tiny neighbour for almost 30 years.

Resolution 1559, passed by the Security Council last year and co-sponsored by France and the United States, calls for Syria's withdrawal as well as the disarming of militant groups like Hezbollah.

Roed-Larsen's meeting with Assad came after convoys of Syrian troops had already returned home Saturday in a partial pullout of the 14,000-strong force in Lebanon.

Of his agreement with Assad, the envoy said: "The first stage will see the relocation of all military forces and intelligence apparatus to the Bekaa valley by the end of March.

"Further, a significant number of these Syrian forces, including intelligence (personnel), will be withdrawn from Lebanon into Syria during this stage.

"The second stage will lead to a complete and full withdrawal of all Syrian military personnel, assets and intelligence apparatus," Roed-Larsen said in a statement read to AFP in Beirut.

The envoy travelled to Syria from Beirut, where he expressed his condolences Friday to the family of slain former Lebanese prime minister and billionaire businessman Rafiq Hariri.

Hariri's February 14 assassination in a massive bomb blast in Beirut triggered a major political upheaval in Lebanon and intensified international pressure on Damascus to end its powerful grip on its smaller neighbour.

In Beirut, pro-Syrian prime minister-designate Omar Karameh -- reappointed just 10 days after standing down in the face of massive public protests following Hariri's murder -- is still struggling to form a new government.

The opposition, which accuses the Lebanese regime and its political masters in Damascus of having a hand in Hariri's killing, has so far rebuffed his calls for a national unity government.

More than 10,00O people holding colored pieces of cardboard formed a huge Lebanese flag in Beirut on Saturday in another spirited tribute to Hariri.

Early Saturday, a convoy of Syrian military vehicles carrying troops and equipment crossed the Lebanese-Syrian border, greeted by a a cheering crowd waving Syrian flags and shouting pro-Assad slogans.

By late Friday the Syrian army had evacuated all positions in northern Lebanon except for six known intelligence positions under an earlier redeployment plan that began Tuesday and was to last a week to 10 days.

Assad had previously pledged to pull back the troops and an unknown number of intelligence forces in Lebanon to the eastern Bekaa Valley, where the other Syrian soldiers are already based, by the end of March.

The ongoing pullback affects 6,000 troops stationed in northern Lebanon and the mountains overlooking Beirut and is seen as a prelude to the departure of all of Syrian forces.

Syrian units entered the country in 1976 to serve as a buffer between warring factions early in the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war and their numbers reached a peak of 40,000 troops before a series of partial withdrawals.

Syria's ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the troops would be out of Lebanon by May, when legislative elections are due to be held.