BEIRUT - An ongoing Syrian military withdrawal is giving Lebanon a chance to chart its own future, but the country's fractious politicians are still struggling to shake off the effect of Syrian influence here in a quest for national unity.
Lebanon is suffering political paralysis at the moment, with parties appearing divided along a fault line reflecting Syria's near-30-year military and political domination.
The country's prime minister-designate, Omar Karameh, considered a Syrian sympathizer, has so far appealed in vain to the opposition to join him in a government of national unity to prepare parliamentary elections later this spring.
The Lebanese opposition, made up largely but not exclusively of Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze, takes a far tougher line toward Syria than the current government and has agitated strenuously for a speedy departure from the country of the estimated 14,000 Syrian troops.
Parties seen as pro-Syrian, in particular those representing the country's Shiite Muslim community, see Damascus as having helped guarantee social peace and political pluralism in the aftermath of Lebanon's devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
But both sides agree that one way or another Syrian forces who entered Lebanon in 1976 to separate warring Lebanese factions must eventually go home.
And over the past several weeks that is what has been happening.
Syrian troops and intelligence agents have now pulled back to eastern Lebanon and, according to a Lebanese army officer, some 4,000 have crossed the border into Syria itself, leaving about 10,000 concentrated in the Bekaa valley.
The redeployment was in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution and came in the face of international and domestic pressure following the February 14 assassination of five times prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Despite denials by the Lebanese and Syrian governments, the killing has been blamed by the opposition on Lebanese and Syrian agents.
The assassination plunged Lebanon into crisis, exacerbating internal political fissures that have led to an ominous stalemate despite the absence after three decades of intense Syrian influence.
Reacting to public fury, Prime Minister Karameh resigned on Febraury 28, only to be called back to office 10 days later by President Emile Lahoud.
In his quest to form a government he has run into -- and rejected -- opposition demands for the removal of Lebanon's security chiefs and an international probe into Hariri's death.
Leading the opposition charge is the veteran Druze politician Walid Jumblatt, who Thursday ruled out participation in a national unity cabinet and called for the resignation of President Lahoud, seen as a Syrian loyalist.
"Once you remove Lahoud, you start a new Lebanon, whereby the president is no longer a Syrian puppet but a Syrian ally that can speak freely with the Syrians," he said in a television interview.
But most opposition leaders are reluctant to add to the current instability by advocating the Lahoud's departure at a time when the country is without a permanent government.
"We cannot have a vacuum in the presidency after the government resigned," the patriarch of Lebanon's Maronite church, Nasrallah Sfeir, said in an interview in Washington, where he met President George W. Bush.
"If a government is formed it will supervise (legislative) elections and it will be the task of the new parliament" to elect a new president.
On the other side of the political divide, Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Shiite movement Hezbollah, says the need for a new government and polticial dialogue has become "desperate."
"The party hindering dialogue or discussion will be responsible for all the economic, social and political deterioration in the country," he said in a television interview Wednesday.
"We will return to the negotating table. However the opposition refuses to discuss their demands unless they are met in advance."
Lebanon may be breathing easier with the withdrawal of the Syrians but the political air is far from cleared.
03/18/2005 12:04 GMT