SYRIA: Syria said yesterday it planned to pull back more troops to eastern Lebanon in line with a 16-year-old agreement.
The Syrian deputy foreign minister, Mr Waleed al-Mualem, said his country was ready to work with the UN to implement a Security Council resolution demanding its 14,000 troops leave Lebanon, in apparent response to international pressure.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese have taken to the streets to protest against Syria's military and political grip on its neighbour since a bomb killed Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri, in Beirut last week.
Yesterday UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon by April, when he is due to present a report on the issue to the Security Council, Al Arabiya television reported. It said Mr Annan was referring to a full withdrawal, not a redeployment.
"He cautioned that the Security Council may take measures against Syria if it does not... comply with the resolution," the television channel said.
A three-member UN team led by Garda deputy police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald has arrived in Beirut to report on the assassination, witnesses said.
At the instruction of the Security Council, Mr Annan appointed a team last week to urgently report on "the circumstances, causes and consequences of the assassination".
Lebanon's Syrian-backed government has rejected calls for an international investigation committee into the killing but has pledged to co-operate with the UN mission.
In a sign that a redeployment would be too little to satisfy Syria's most vocal opponents, Lebanon's Druze opposition figure Mr Walid Jumblatt reacted furiously to the Syrian announcement. "This is a new farce solely to appease Lebanese opinion," he told Radio France Internationale in Beirut. "It won't work."