by Nayla Razzouk
BEIRUT - Lebanese movements loyal to Damascus, including the powerful Shiite militia Hezbollah, on Sunday rejected international calls for an immediate and full withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country.
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said the groups will demonstrate in Beirut on Tuesday to denounce foreign interventions and to express gratitude to Syria.
He invited opposition groups -- which have maintained protests to demand a Syrian pullout since the February 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri -- to join the rally.
Opposition groups, which blamed the pro-Syrian regime and Damascus for the assassination that plunged the country into a political crisis, plan to stage their own demonstration on Monday to mark three weeks since Hariri's killing.
In a shooting incident between rival camps, an 18-year-old youth was wounded late Sunday near a sit-in by anti-Syrian opposition supporters in downtown Beirut, hospital and security sources said.
A senior security official told AFP that the incident occurred after a gunman in a car sporting the flag of the pro-Syrian Shiite Muslim movement Amal fired on another car flying the flag of a Christian opposition group.
President Emile Lahoud, meanwhile, announced parliamentary consultations for Wednesday to name a new prime minister following the resignation of the Syrian-backed government last week.
Lahoud's consultations with parliamentary blocks and independent MPs are mandatory to name a new prime minister.
Nasrallah said after a meeting of the movements that they were not in favour of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which called for the pullout of foreign troops as Lebanon was still in a "state of war with the enemy Israel."
"We refuse that the presence of Syrian troops in the Bekaa be subject to (UN Security Council) Resolution 1559," which also demanded the disarming of militias in Lebanon, Nasrallah told reporters.
"It can only be subject to the Taef accord," which stipulates a Syrian pullback into the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon before an agreement by the two states on the duration of the Syrian military presence.
"We have the right to reject the international resolution because it is a blatant interference in our internal affairs and all its clauses are free services to the Israeli enemy," said Nasrallah.
The sheikh, whose guerrilla movement was instrumental in Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2000, also expressed confidence that Israel would soon withdraw from the Shebaa Farms border territories claimed by Lebanon.
On Saturday, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vowed to pull back the 14,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon toward the border, in a speech responding to foreign pressure for an end to Syrian interference in Lebanon.
Lebanon's outgoing Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad said Sunday that Syria would start the pullback after a Lebanese-Syrian summit due in Damascus on Monday.
While Assad's speech was met with whistles by thousands of protestors in downtown Beirut late on Saturday, pro-Syrians mounted counter-demonstrations where they waved his portrait and fired shots in the air.
Leading opposition politician Walid Jumblatt was guarded in his reaction to Assad's speech, but said it was "positive and meets our aspirations".
"I think when President Assad said in front of the Syrian people and the Lebanese people and the world that he will withdraw his troops, I think he was playing on words. We will see. We will monitor the implementation."
Syria has long argued that it needs to retain troops in Lebanon because of Israel's continued occupation of the Golan Heights, seized from Damascus in the 1967 Middle East war.
The troops entered Lebanon in 1976 under an Arab League mandate to try to restore peace during that country's 15-year long civil war which finally ended in 1990 under the Taef agreement.

03/06/2005 21:03 GMT