UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Syria's president has agreed to present a firm timetable by early April for a full withdrawal of his country's troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon.
Annan met President Bashar Assad on the sidelines of an Arab summit in Algiers and said Assad confirmed his commitment to UN Resolution 1559, which called for a Syrian withdrawal.
"The withdrawal has begun and it continues. He's working out a timetable in consultation with the Lebanese authorities and will withdraw his troops completely into Syrian territory. Not just the troops but also the security service, as well as all the logistical and material equipment to Syria," Annan told reporters.
Syria has pulled back its troops and intelligence agents into eastern Lebanon toward the border and has been promising to work out their complete removal with the pro-Syrian government in Beirut. But it has so far not given a timetable, despite mounting international pressure on it to get out of the nation it has dominated for years.
timetable coming
Annan said Assad agreed a timetable would be ready in time for a visit to Damascus by a UN envoy in the first week of April. Annan said he expects the envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, to return with a "credible and well-defined timetable."
"We need to see all of them withdrawn and President Assad has confirmed to me that that is his intention and he will implement 1559 in full," said Annan. Syria has suggested previously that it would set the date for a full withdrawal at a meeting of Syrian and Lebanese officers scheduled for April 7.
In the pullback over recent weeks, Lebanese officials say 4,000 of Syria's 14,000 troops left Lebanon completely. The remainder are in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Syrian military intelligence agents have left Beirut, the capital, and are packing to leave Tripoli, the country's second-largest city.
Syria and Lebanon's pro-Syrian government both sought to ensure that the issue was not formally discussed at the Arab League summit. Neither country tabled a resolution on Syria's withdrawal, although it was discussed informally, said Abdelaziz Belkhadem, foreign minister of Algeria, the gathering's host.
continued violence
In other developments, an explosion devastated a business center early yesterday on a commercial street in Lebanon's Christian heartland, a stronghold of the anti-Syrian opposition, killing two people and wounding two more, police said.
The second explosion in less than a week in a Christian area sparked fears of the return of the sectarian violence that plagued Lebanon during the 1975-90 civil war.
Opposition lawmakers for the area denounced the bombing as an attempt to undermine security. One blamed government security agencies' negligence and another called on supporters not to be carried away by attempts to sow sectarian strife. "Each citizen should be his own guard," Legislator Nematallah Abi Nasr said in urging people to be vigilant.
The explosion occurred shortly after midnight at the Alta Vista Shopping Center on the Kaslik stretch near Jounieh, the main Christian port city 15km north of Beirut. Police believe the bomb was at least 20kg of explosives. The center was closed at the time of the blast.
The explosion shattered shop windows across the area, which is known for its posh boutiques and nightlife.
Aluminum panel sheeting at the center's ceiling was torn, car alarms were set off and shop shutters were blown out. Red Cross and Civil Defense workers searched by hand through the debris or used dogs to search for casualties as residents rushed from buildings along the stretch to inspect the damage.
LBC TV, the leading station in the country, said earlier that three people were killed and eight wounded in the explosion. But the station later revised the figure to two dead and four wounded. It identified the dead as an Indian and a Pakistani and the injured as a Sri Lankan woman, a Sri Lankan man and two Lebanese, including one who suffered very light injuries.
The explosion came amid major political turmoil in Lebanon in the wake of the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops to east Lebanon and Syria.
Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, although largely peaceful, have kept tension high between the pro-Syrian and the anti-Syrian camps.
Early Saturday, a car bomb in a shopping area in a northern Christian suburb of Beirut injured nine people.
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