A special UN envoy, bearing a pledge from Syria to pull its troops from Lebanon, was meeting yesterday with an embattled Lebanese government facing the prospect of another huge anti-Syrian demonstration.
Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen was to see the top three figures in Lebanon's Syrian-backed administration in Beirut a day after winning a commitment to a full troop withdrawal from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Larsen on Saturday implied that Assad had also agreed to a withdrawal schedule, saying "further details of the timetable" would be presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York this week.
But no dates were disclosed and it was far from certain that Larsen's mission would placate Lebanon's emboldened anti-Syrian opposition movement, which has called for a demonstration today in central Beirut.
The gathering will mark one month since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, a killing -- blamed by many here on Damascus -- that sparked an outbreak of public fury and intensified pressure for the departure of all 14,000 Syrian troops and intelligence officers.
Syrian authorities have denied involvement in the assassination.
Today's protest was expected to be a response to a massive rally last Tuesday of Lebanese groups -- notably the Shiite movement Hezbollah -- sympathetic to Syria.
Pro-Syrian forces were also to stage a demonstration yesterday in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh.
The increasingly volatile political atmosphere prompted Lebanese President Emile Lahoud to warn of a catastrophe Saturday if the demonstrations continued.
"If they want to continue demonstrating, a little firecracker will lead to catastrophe," Lahoud said as he received a union delegation.
"We are not in Georgia and nor are we in Ukraine. We have lived through 17 years of war and this could happen again," he added, referring to Lebanon's devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
Larsen's mission to Syria on Saturday was to persuade Assad to accept a UN Security Council resolution approved last September calling for the complete removal of Syria's near-30-year military presence in Lebanon -- a mission he said had been accomplished.
"The president has committed to withdrawing all troops and intelligence services from Lebanon in fulfillment of Security Council Resolution 1559," he declared.
He said the pullout would come in two stages, with Syrian military and intelligence units first redeploying to the Bekaa valley in eastern Lebanon ahead of their complete evacuation.
While no dates were revealed, the newspaper An-Nahar said yesterday that a timetable for a definitive pullout would be fixed in the first week of April, with the full withdrawal completed ahead of legislative elections in Lebanon tentatively scheduled for May.
The Washington Post, citing US and UN sources, reported that Syria has promised to withdraw one-third of the 15,000 troops and 5,000 intelligence agents it said are stationed in Lebanon by the end of this month.
The Lebanese government opposed Resolution 1559 and has insisted instead on implementing the 1989 Taef accord, which paved the way for an end to Lebanon's factional strife a year later.
While the Taef agreement called for an initial redeployment of Syrian troops in the Bekaa, it notably left it to the Lebanese and Syrian governments to determine the duration of the Syrian military presence as a whole.
Syria also objected to Resolution 1559 but now appears to have accepted it, leaving Lebanese authorities in what could be considered an awkward diplomatic position.
In addition to Lahoud, Larsen was also to confer with Prime Minister-designate Omar Karameh and parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri.
Karameh, reappointed last Thursday just 10 days after standing down in the face of massive public protests following Hariri's murder -- is still struggling to form a new administration.
The opposition has so far rebuffed his calls for a national unity government and parliamentary sources said he had postponed by one day consultations with MPs on a new cabinet that were to have begun today.
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