BEIRUT, Feb 8 (AFP) - The UN envoy tasked with following up on Security Council Resolution 1559 which calls for Syrian troops to pull out of Lebanon said Tuesday he was "encouraged" by his talks in Damascus and Beirut this week.
"I've been tremendously encouraged through my meetings in Damascus and in Beirut ... that we can find common ground, that we can go forward in a sensible and reasonable way," Terje Roed-Larsen told journalists.
The United Nations is working to implement all UN resolutions as a means to achieve a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East, he said, while reiterating the world's body support for the stability and unity of Lebanon.
The UN envoy, who is to hold further talks in Beirut on Wednesday, also pledged his backing for the Taef accords which ended Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and provide for a gradual withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country.
It was "in most ways also overlapping with the main requirements of 1559", said Roed-Larsen.
But at the end of his mission to Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara bluntly told Roed-Larsen that Resolution 1559 was causing tension in the region, according to Syria's news agency SANA.
The special envoy is writing a report on compliance with the resolution which was adopted last September.
Damascus says it is only prepared to comply with 1559 after the Security Council implements Resolutions 242 and 338, which call on Israel to evacuate Arab land conquered in the 1967 Middle East war.
Roed-Larsen left the Syrian foreign ministry in silence after his talks Monday and made no comment to journalists, before travelling on to Beirut without having had an expected meeting with President Bashar al-Assad.
The UN resolution calls for Lebanon to exercise its sovereignty over all of its territory, including formerly Israeli-occupied areas of the south administered by the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
It also demands the withdrawal of all foreign troops and an end to meddling in its domestic politics, in a clear reference to dominant neighbour Syria which still has some 14,000 troops in Lebanon.
Last October, UN chief Kofi Annan reported that both Syria and Lebanon were in breach of the text. His envoy Roed-Larsen is to draft a new report for Annan to present in April.
02/08/2005 19:22 GMT - AFP