BEIRUT - The Lebanese opposition is turning up the heat on the pro-Syrian Lebanese government, hoping to garner broad international support behind its demand for a full Syrian military withdrawal from the country.
The campaign to end Syria's near 30-year military presence in Lebanon nonetheless appears to be bearing some fruit.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad committed himself during a meeting Saturday with a special UN envoy to calling home all Syrian military and intelligence units from Lebanon in compliance with a Security Council resolution.
The envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, said he would next week present UN Secretary General Kofi Annan with "further details of the timetable" for a complete Syrian pullout when he returns to New York.
But he did not disclose a precise timeframe for Syria's departure from Lebanon, where it has stationed troops since 1976.
Syria has come under intense international and Lebanese pressure to leave Lebanon since the February 14 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, a popular former prime minister. Syria has denied suggestions here and elsewhere that it had a hand in the killing.
Syrian forces in Lebanon, who number 14,000, have nonetheless begun a redeployment toward the east of the country, with some units having already crossed the border and returned home.
The after-effects of the Hariri assassination have meanwhile plunged Lebanon into political turmoil. Pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karameh resigned on February 28, only to be called back by President Emile Lahoud on Thursday to form a government of national unity.
Opposition parties promptly spurned an appeal for national unity and are now looking to broaden their support base.
A delegation of opposition MPs met this week in Brussels with European Union external affairs commissioner Javier Solana and with French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier.
One of the government's leading opponents, the Druze politician Walid Jumblatt, was also in Moscow to confer with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Larov.
"In effect, the opposition has the wind in its sails and is going to take advantage of a Syrian withdrawal to bring about a change in power even before legislative elections," said the Hariri newspaper Al-Mustaqbal, referring to the vote unofficially planned for mid-May.
Karameh has ackowledged that convincing the opposition to join him in a national unity cabinet would be no easy task.
"The country cannot be saved unless there is a cabinet that witnesses a presence by the opposition," he insisted Friday according to press reports here.
Opposition parties, in exchange for taking part in the government, are demanding an international probe into Hariri's assassination, free elections monitored by international observers and the departure of the heads of the Lebanese security services.
03/12/2005 12:49 GMT