Syria said that it is ready to withdraw troops from Lebanon

United States had welcomed Syria’s announcement that it is going to withdraw its troops in Lebanon toward their common border. “This needs to happen immediately and we would certainly welcome steps to implement that important UN resolution,” State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said. Syria said it will withdraw its troops from neighboring Lebanon according to the 1989 Taif agreement between Syria and Lebanon.

The Taif Accord that ended Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil wars called for a redeployment of Syrian troops to eastern Lebanon, followed by agreements on a timetable for a full withdrawal. Both Syria and Lebanon have confirmed the redeployment, but gave no time frame yet. The two governments indicated the Syrian troops would not leave Lebanon at this stage. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, added his voice yesterday to American calls for Syria to pull out of Lebanon.

He warned the Syrians in an Arabic television interview that they would face “measures” presumably some form of sanctions - if they did not pull their army out of Lebanon completely by April With pressure growing every day, Waleed al-Mualem, the Syrian deputy foreign minister, committed his country to further withdrawals, but failed to make a clear commitment to complete evacuation.

Calls for withdrawal follow an unprecedented display of anti-Syrian opposition in Lebanon after the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, the former prime minister, who was blown up in Beirut by a car bomb widely blamed on Syria. A permanent withdrawal would change the political complexion of Lebanon, effectively regarded by Damascus for decades as part of Greater Syria where its troops and security services could do as they pleased. yria said Thursday it planned to pull back more troops to eastern Lebanon in line with a 16-year-old agreement and Lebanon’s defense minister said troops would be on the move soon.

Damascus was ready to work with the United Nations to implement a Security Council resolution demanding its 14,000 troops leave Lebanon, Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed al-Mualem said, in apparent response to international pressure. Tens of thousands of Lebanese have taken to the streets to protest against Syria’s military and political grip on its tiny neighbor since a huge bomb killed Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in Beirut last week.

“Syria expresses its keen interest in cooperating with the envoy of the secretary-general of the United Nations to accomplish his mission in the best formula possible,” Mualem told reporters, reading from a statement. “The important withdrawals that have been carried out so far and will be carried out later will be done in agreement with Lebanon against the backdrop of the Taif Accord and the mechanisms it entails,” he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Thursday on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon by April, when he is due to present a report on the issue to the Security Council, Al Arabiya television reported. The satellite channel said Annan told it in an interview he was referring to a full withdrawal, not a redeployment. Mixed information circulated Beirut Thursday about a Syrian redeployment to the Bekaa. But if the expected Syrian step was announced a bit too soon, it is a fact that a decision to undertake an exhaustive redeployment of all Syrian troops to the Bekaa in the immediate future has been taken by the Syrian leadership over the past 48 hours. A further redeployment beyond the Lebanese border will later be discussed with UN special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. However, according to preliminary information, the expected pullout will not extend to the Syrian security services operational across the country.

According to government sources close to Damascus, the possibility of a later withdrawal beyond the Lebanese border will be discussed with Larsen, who is expected in the region in the coming days. The Syrians will examine with the UN envoy this issue along with others related to Security Council Resolution 1559, in the context of the “common ground” that Larsen has been trying to establish between this resolution and the Taif Accord.