Assad Defiant About Pullout

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Saturday announced a phased withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, drawing the immediate ire of U.S. officials, who had called for a complete and immediate evacuation of Syrian soldiers and agents from the country they have come to dominate.

Speaking to the Syrian parliament in Damascus, a defiant Assad seemed determined to display Syrian imperviousness to foreign pressure, refusing to say how soon the soldiers would pull out. The troops would first move to the Bekaa Valley, a strip of villages and farmland near the Syrian border, the president said. Then the Syrians and Lebanese would negotiate a move to the frontier between the two countries, but Assad didn’t say which side of the border they would occupy.

In a downtown Beirut plaza, thousands of jeering and anxious demonstrators gathered to watch Assad’s speech live on massive television screens. They hooted with laughter when the Syrian president coughed and booed his claims that Syria wanted to protect the Lebanese. But a rowdy cheer swept the crowd when they heard Assad say that the soldiers would retreat.

For most of the flag-waving demonstrators, however, excitement was tempered with skepticism.

“We want a free Lebanon, and this is not enough,” said Sari Haddad, a 26-year-old bank employee. “They have to leave completely.”

Syria won international approval to keep tens of thousands of soldiers within the borders of its tumultuous neighbor as part of a 1989 deal that ended Lebanon’s civil war. Back then, the Syrians were supposed to serve as a peacekeeping force to watch over Lebanon’s warring sects and leave once the fighting ended.

But the Syrians, who arrived here three decades ago, never left. Although Damascus has gradually reduced the number of soldiers stationed in Lebanon, it has made up for the lowered military profile by bolstering its hold on Lebanon’s politics and economy.

Last year, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling for the liberation of Lebanon from foreign troops.

Resentment here of Syria exploded onto the streets after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in downtown Beirut last month. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for the bomb attack, and his funeral began weeks of round-the-clock protests in Beirut. The pressure spread to Syria’s allies, leaving Assad little room to ignore the calls to leave.

On Saturday, U.S. officials immediately denounced Assad’s statement as inadequate. Nothing short of a full Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon before scheduled May elections would be acceptable, they said. In his weekly radio address, President Bush demanded that all foreign forces be withdrawn.

“A Syrian withdrawal of all its military and intelligence personnel would help ensure that the Lebanese elections occur as scheduled in the spring and that they will be free and fair,” Bush said.

The Syrian president had plainly anticipated U.S. dissatisfaction with the phased withdrawal. “They may say this isn’t enough,” Assad told lawmakers. “But we say it’s enough.”

Assad reminded the world that a Syrian withdrawal wasn’t as simple as it sounded. “Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon does not mean the absence of Syria’s role,” he said. “Syria’s strength and its role in Lebanon does not depend on the presence of its forces in Lebanon.”

Damascus has deeply penetrated Lebanese institutions and stationed thousands of intelligence agents in the country, ensuring that its influence will linger long after the soldiers leave.

Thousands of Assad’s supporters gathered outside parliament to cheer him on, wave Syrian flags and chant slogans. In his speech, Assad was at pains to say that Syria had always planned to withdraw and that Damascus wasn’t being driven out of Lebanon.

“We are not cowards, and we leave Lebanon with our heads up,” he said, earning a standing ovation from lawmakers.

Assad’s speech was punctuated by swipes at the U.S. administration and the Lebanese demonstrators who have called for Syria to remove its estimated 16,000 soldiers.

With a hint of menace, Assad said the United States would have to take responsibility for the consequences of a Syrian withdrawal. The veiled threat evoked the traditional justification given by Damascus to explain its chokehold on Lebanon: that without Syria keeping the peace, the smaller neighbor would dissolve once again into civil war.

Although Bush and other senior officials have been emphatic in demanding that Syria quit Lebanon, other U.S. officials were careful to note that the United States alone cannot be responsible for forcing Syria to withdraw or keeping the peace there afterward.

“We’re doing this together with the U.N., so there’s a limit to how many answers we have,” an administration official said. “The U.S. did not break Lebanon. Everybody broke Lebanon. So everybody has to have a hand in fixing it.”

Assad implied during his speech Saturday that the number of protesters gathered in Beirut was falsely inflated by a trick camera angle. He also accused his government’s Lebanese opponents of being agents of the West.

“This falls short of the opposition’s demands,” said Farid Khazen, chairman of the political science department at the American University of Beirut. “Not to mention the tone, the many things he said about Lebanon. This is not really what was expected after so many events.”

American and Lebanese skepticism was echoed by officials in Israel, Syria’s arch-nemesis. Silvan Shalom, the Israeli foreign minister, told reporters that although a Syrian withdrawal looks “more real than ever before,” a long road lay ahead.

Shalom urged Lebanon to “establish an independent state, not a protectorate, so that in the foreseeable future it may lead the people and the country in a direction of greater understanding and perhaps even peace with Israel.”

For Assad, the Saturday speech was an inglorious moment. A Lebanese withdrawal means that he will lose his only leverage in any peace talks with Israel. It also diminishes Syria to a nation that has little influence outside its own borders. It was Bashar Assad’s late father, the feared President Hafez Assad, who cemented Syria’s presence in Lebanon.

“Some people were expecting a presidential resignation today,” said Ammar Abdel Hamid, a Syrian dissident and novelist. “OK, it’s a bit naive, but it shows how much they feel the regime has failed to handle the crisis very well. The Syrians have a feeling they put themselves in this position.”

Pressure on Damascus deepened last week, when the Lebanese government collapsed under the weight of relentless street protests. To make matters even more lonesome for Assad, Syria’s usual allies -- most notably Saudi Arabia, a coalition of Arab foreign ministers and Russia -- joined in calls for a troop withdrawal from Damascus. The isolation hit its high point when Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah warned Assad to get his soldiers out of Lebanon.

Syrian and Lebanese officials will meet this week to begin plans for the Syrian withdrawal, Assad said.

International pressure against Syria is expected to continue when special U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen visits Damascus this month, a State Department official said. Roed-Larsen met Friday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

He is expected to visit European leaders before arriving in Damascus with a stern message from the West demanding that Assad withdraw his troops.

“It’s not just outside pressure, it’s internal,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, an analyst who runs a Syrian news website. Speaking of regular Syrians, he added: “The people are tense, stressed. Everything is vague. In the street you see nobody is moving. They are just watching television, the Lebanese satellite channels, because the Syrians aren’t showing what they want to see.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

U.N. Resolution 1559

Resolution 1559 was adopted Sept. 2 by the U.N. Security Council on a 9-0 vote, with six abstentions. The measure was sponsored by the United States and France, which want Syrian troops to leave Lebanon. The resolution also was intended to discourage Lebanon’s parliament from amending the constitution to allow Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud to serve an extra three years. Parliament later amended the constitution anyway. The resolution’s key points:

* It called on all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon. Syria was not specifically mentioned, but it is the only nation with forces in Lebanon.

* It declared support for a “free and fair electoral process in Lebanon’s upcoming presidential election conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence.”

* It called for Lebanon’s government to extend its control over all Lebanese territory. Diplomats said this referred not only to areas controlled by Syria but those under the influence of Hezbollah guerrillas in the south.

Source: Reuters

Times staff writers Sonni Efron in Washington and Henry Chu in Jerusalem contributed to this report.