Syrian President Bashar Assad is likely to announce a troop withdrawal from Lebanon in a speech in Parliament today. "President Assad will deliver an important speech at the People's Assembly in the afternoon. The speech will deal with current political developments in the region," the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said in a brief statement. It was unclear how far the pullback would go to meet UN demands for a complete withdrawal. Informed sources said Bashar would be announcing Syria's position on the developments in Lebanon and the conditions for withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon. US President George W. Bush said he wanted all Syrian forces out by May, when Lebanon holds parliamentary elections. "I don't mean just the troops out of Lebanon, I mean all of them out of Lebanon, particularly the secret service out of Lebanon — the intelligence services," he told the New York Post in an interview published yesterday. "This is nonnegotiable. It is time to get out," he said. "I don't think you can have fair elections with Syrian troops there." Bush told the paper there was no threat of military action.
More, from al-Jizzles...
Syrian President Bashar al-Asad is poised to announce a major troop redeployment in neighbouring Lebanon, officials have said. But it was unclear how far the pullback would go to meet UN demands for a complete withdrawal. A Lebanese minister on Friday said Syria was seeking "guarantees" from the international community before agreeing to a full pullout, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was satisfied the new proposals from Damascus "correspond" with UN Security Council Resolution 1559.
