NEW YORK, Sept 23 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday he believed Syria had adopted a "helpful" attitude in addressing US concerns about patrolling its border with Iraq and meeting a UN call to withdraw troops from Lebanon.
A day after holding what he termed "positive" talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara on the sidelines of the annual session of the UN General Assembly, Powell said he had been encouraged by Damascus' response.
"We were pleased to see that there is underway a withdrawal of forces from Lebanon and from some camps south of Beirut that we have not previously seen withdrawals from," he said.
"So I think that's encouraging," Powell told reporters at the State Department's Foreign Press Center in New York where he is attending the General Assembly meeting.
Powell said that Washington -- based on his conversation with Shara on Wednesday and recent talks in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and senior US officials -- believed Syria might embrace a US-backed UN Security Council resolution calling for all foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon.
"We get the impression that the Syrians are taking the resolution seriously and are trying to be helpful," he said.
Earlier this week, Syria began redeploying about 3,000 of its some 15,000 troops remaining in Lebanon in apparent response to the UN resolution.
It is the fifth redeployment in three years, during which Syria has trimmed the number of its troops in Lebanon from a high of 35,000 at the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Shortly before Powell spoke, Syrian state radio hailed what it described as a "marked improvement" in ties with the United States after the Powell-Shara meeting and the visit to Damascus earlier this month of top US Middle East envoy, William Burns.
US-Syrian relations reached a new low in May, when Washington imposed sanctions on Damascus for its support of alleged terrorist groups and undermining US efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq.
But shortly after Burns' trip to Syria, reports emerged that Damascus was ready to begin cooperating with the interim government of Iraq and the US-led coalition there on stemming the flow of militants, guns and money over the Syrian border.
"Conversations are taking place between the coalition, and the Iraqi interim government and Syrian authorities with respect to the border and people going back and forth across the border," Powell said.
A US delegation is expected in Damascus later this month to discuss concrete ways of securing the border, across which Washington alleges militants are crossing to destabilise the interim Iraqi administration.
Powell said he talks with Shara had ended "on a positive note" but stressed that if US ties with Syria are to be fully normalized, Washington would need to see more than words.
"We have seen some positive actions but we are looking for full action and not just statements or claims to action," he said.