Syria to withdraw from Lebanon 'soon'

Syria will “soon” take steps to withdraw its army from Lebanese areas in accordance with a 1989 agreement, the Arab League chief said today.

The announcement by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa came after talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.

“Assad stressed more than once his firm determination to go on with implementing the Taif agreement and achieve Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in accordance with this agreement,” Moussa said.

“Syrian withdrawal is part of Syrian policy and will see steps in this direction very soon,” Moussa quoted Assad as saying.

The 1989 agreement signed in Taif, Saudi Arabia, ended the civil war that had started in 1975.

Among other things, it called for Syrian forces, which had entered Lebanon ostensibly to separate the warring sides, to withdraw within two years to the eastern Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border.

Thousands of opposition supporters shouted insults at Syria and demanded the resignation of their pro-Syrian government in a central Beirut demonstration today.

The protest came a week after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s most prominent politician.

Beating drums and waving mostly Lebanese flags or those of their own parties, protesters gathered at the site where Hariri, a former prime minister, was killed in a massive bomb that the opposition blames on Damascus.

“Syria out!” “We don’t want a parliament that acts as a doorkeeper for the Syrians,” some yelled, competing with loud insults shouted against President Assad.

The protesters wore scarves of red and white – the colours of Lebanon’s flag - which have become the symbol of the opposition’s “independence uprising”, described as a peaceful campaign to dislodge the pro-Syrian government and force the Syrian army out of Lebanon.

Billionaire Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast shook Lebanon and sparked an outpouring of sympathy for the man credited with rebuilding the country from the destruction of the 1975-90 civil war, cutting across the sectarian divide.