Syria now promises to get all of its forces out of Lebanon by April 30th — and even let a United Nations verification team come in and see for itself that the troops are gone:
Syria has promised to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon by April 30 and will let a United Nations team verify the pullout, a U.N. envoy said Sunday.Damascus ordered the withdrawal, demanded by a Security Council resolution seven months ago, after coming under intense international pressure over the Feb. 14 assassination of a Lebanese former prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri.
The U.N. envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara had told him that “all Syrian troops, military assets and the intelligence apparatus will have been withdrawn fully and completely latest by April 30, 2005.”
“Syria has agreed that subject to the acceptance of the Lebanese authorities a U.N. verification team will be dispatched to verify the full Syrian military and intelligence withdrawal,” the U.N. official said.
Can Syria be trusted this time? Certainly setting such a SPECIFIC DATE would suggest that it is. But we’ll know more by April 30th if Assad & Co. are truly serious.
And even if they are a danger lurks: Syrian surrogates active in Lebanese affairs. There is a real danger that Syria can withdraw with “plausible deniability” but still remain an oppressive force within Lebanon. So even even when their troops are gone, it may not be totally over.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.