SYRIA: Syria completed the first phase of its troop pull-out from Lebanon yesterday, bringing Damascus closer to meeting US and Lebanese opposition demands that it withdraw from the neighbour it has dominated for three decades.
A Lebanese security source said 4,000 to 6,000 Syrian troops had returned home since the pull-out plan was announced on March 5th, leaving 8,000 to 10,000 in eastern Lebanon.
He said all Syrian forces had pulled back to the Bekaa Valley or crossed into Syria. "There are just some logistics left. But the people went, all of them."
Washington wants all Syrian troops and intelligence agents out of Lebanon to allow for free elections in May and demands the disarmament of Shia Muslim Hizbullah guerrillas.
But Hizbullah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has vowed to keep its guns to fight Israel rather than confining itself to politics as demanded by President George Bush.
Deepening Lebanon's political crisis, a key opposition leader said that he and his allies would not be willing to join a government as long as the pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, remained in office.
"To join them means to enter into a powerless government headed by Lahoud who is controlling everything," Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said in his stone palace in the rugged eastern Chouf mountains. "Who is Lahoud? A Syrian puppet."
That stance could wreck a bid to forge a unity government by the pro-Syrian prime minister, Omar Karami, who resigned on February 28th under opposition pressure but was reappointed last week.
Syria bowed to international demands for a troop withdrawal after huge Beirut street protests which were provoked by the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in a February 14th bombing.
A Lebanese-Syrian committee is to meet in early April to discuss any future Syrian presence, the security source said.
Witnesses said the last two Syrian intelligence centres in the coastal city of Tripoli were emptied at dawn. They were among the last to be vacated in northern Lebanon.
Syria's often feared intelligence apparatus has been a key element in its political and military dominance of Lebanon since its troops first intervened early in the 1975-1990 civil war.
A Lebanese security chief said he and his colleagues, all close to Syria, were ready to go to court to disprove opposition charges that they may have had a hand in Hariri's killing.
Jamil al-Sayyed, the head of Lebanese General Security, rejected opposition calls for him and his colleagues to resign and accused opposition politicians of corruption.
"All chiefs of the security organs are ready to stand trial because we don't have any secrets," he said.
The Syrian withdrawal has highlighted Hizbullah's status as the only Lebanese faction that openly retains its weapons.
Many Maronite Christians would like to see Hizbullah disarmed, but Mr Jumblatt said the anti-Syrian camp was not discussing the subject, which was best left to a national dialogue.
"No one's talking about weapons," he said.
Washington says Hizbullah will stay on its list of terrorist groups until it disarms.
It was allowed to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war to enable it to fight Israeli occupation of the south, which ended in 2000.
Hizbullah brought hundreds of thousands of anti-US demonstrators on to the streets last week in a show of strength in Lebanon, where it has parliament members and runs charities.
Hizbullah says it will not lay down its guns in line with a UN Security Council resolution that calls for foreign forces to leave Lebanon and for all militias there to disarm.