Syria completed the first phase of its troop pullout from Lebanon on Thursday, bringing Damascus closer to meeting US and Lebanese Opposition demands that it quit the neighbour it has dominated for three decades. But the Shia Muslim Hizbollah group, which is backed by Syria and Iran, said it was not ready to disarm its anti-Israel guerrillas, defying demands by Washington that it do so if it wants to escape its US listing as a terrorist organisation. All Syrian troops and intelligence agents in Lebanon have pulled back to eastern Lebanon or crossed into Syria under a two-stage withdrawal, a senior Lebanese security source said. ‘‘It roughly ended,’’ he said of the first phase. ‘‘There are just some logistics left. But the people went, all of them.’’ The source said 8,000 to 10,000 Syrian troops remained in the eastern Bekaa Valley while 4,000 to 6,000 had returned home. A joint Lebanese-Syrian committee was expected to meet in early April to discuss the future of the troops in the Bekaa, he said. Witnesses said the last two Syrian intelligence centres in the coastal city of Tripoli were completely emptied at dawn. They were among the last to be vacated in northern Lebanon. The Hizbollah said it would not lay down its guns in line with a UN Security Council resolution that calls for foreign forces to leave Lebanon and for all militias there to disarm. ‘‘I’m holding onto the weapons of the resistance because I think the resistance. is the best formula to protect Lebanon and to deter any Israeli aggression,’’ the group’s leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said in a television interview on Wednesday. He said Hizbollah, which helped force Israel to end its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000, would use its weapons only against Israel, not in Lebanon. Hizbollah is the only faction to retain its arms openly since the civil war. Nasrallah reiterated calls for dialogue between Lebanon’spolitical groups. His comments came as US President George W. Bush tried to clarify remarks in which he had left the door open for Hizbollah to have a political role in Lebanon if it disarmed. ‘‘We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they’re not by laying down arms and not threatening peace’’ between Israel and the Palestinians, said Bush.The White House last week denied a media report that the United States was grudgingly moving into line with efforts by France and the United Nations to get the group into the Lebanese political mainstream. But aides said privately that Washington faces a quandary with how to deal with the group, noting that it wields considerable political clout in Lebanon ahead of may parliamentary elections there. Bush’s comments came as he met in his Oval Office with Jordan’s King Abdullah II to discuss Iraq, democratic reforms in the Middle East, efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the situation in Lebanon. ‘‘One of our concerns, which his majesty and I discussed, is that Hezbollah may try to derail the peace process between Israeli and the Palestinians,” said the US president. ‘‘And it’s very important that this peace process go forward, for the sake of the Palestinians, for the sake if the Israelis, and for the sake of all the people in the region,’’ said Bush.
