Syria will pull its security and intelligence personnel out of Lebanon along with its troops, a Syrian official source said on Tuesday.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud agreed on Monday to shift Syrian troops to eastern Lebanon this month. A statement said the Syrian and Lebanese military would then decide how long the Syrians stay. The source gave no timetable for the second phase of thepullout, but said: This doesn’t mean it won’t be soon.’’‘‘The fact that security forces were not mentioned in the statement is merely because they move along with the armed forces. It is a given. The withdrawal is of all Syrian forces,’’ said the source, who asked not to be named.The redeployment would be the biggest single Syrian pullback since the troops intervened in Lebanon’s civil war in 1976. The war ended in 1990 under the Taif Accord, which called for Syrian troops to move to eastern Lebanon within two years, pending a bilateral agreement on a full withdrawal. The source said Damascus wants to implement that accord and a UN resolution demanding that foreign troops quit Lebanon.‘‘The United Nations envoy Terje Roed-Larsen will be coming on Saturday or Sunday and we will discuss with him the steps taken on the ground and other aspects of the withdrawal plan, which is in line with both the Taif Accord and resolution 1559.’’British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he wanted a ‘‘swift, but phased’’ Syrian withdrawal, adding that such a move was in the interests of the Syrians as well as the Lebanese.‘Not enough’ says IsraelUNITED NATIONS: Israel has dismissed the pledge by Syria to rebase its troops in Lebanon, saying it would be satisfied only by a full withdrawal of Syrian forces prior to Lebanese elections set for May.‘‘Partial withdrawal is not enough,’’ Silvan Shalom, Israel’s Foreign Minister, said after talks with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. A full withdrawal ‘‘can be done in a very short time. It should be done in a very short time. The Syrians are not willing to do it,’’ he said. —ReutersBush for full pullout by MayWASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush on Tuesday demanded Syria pull troops out of Lebanon before Lebanese Parliamentary elections in May and give way to a democracy movement providing hope in the broader Middle East.In a development that did not fit the US script, hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central Beirut. Bush said Syria must ‘‘end its nearly 30-year occupation of Lebanon or become even more isolated’’. He dismissed Syrian President Assad’s pledge to shift Syrian troops to eastern Lebanon by March 31, calling it a delaying tactic and half measure. —Reuters
