DATE=3/24/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=LEBANON / SYRIA (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-260553
BYLINE=EDWARD YERANIAN
DATELINE=BEIRUT
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: With President Clinton set to meet Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad on Sunday in Geneva to
discuss Middle East peace, one major Beirut newspaper
is questioning Syria's continued military presence in
Lebanon. The 1989 accord that put an end to the
Lebanese civil war called for a gradual redeployment
and withdrawal of Syrian troops, but most never
departed. Edward Yeranian reports from Beirut.
TEXT: Syrian troops first entered Lebanon in 1976 at
the request of the Lebanese government. Civil war had
broken out a year earlier and Palestinian guerillas
controlled much of the country. Twenty four years
later, with civil war mostly a memory, 35-thousand
Syrian troops still remain in Lebanon.
In a Thursday editorial, Gibrane Tueni, editor of
Beirut's influential "An Nahar" newspaper called on
Syria to "withdraw some of (those) troops." Mr. Tueni
told V-O-A:
/// ACT TUENI ///
We think in Lebanon that we paid a very high
price for all the peace process in the Middle
East. We would like to be sitting around the
table and not laying on the table. We would like
to be shareholders in this peace process.
/// END ACT ///
/// OPT /// In 1989, Lebanon's then prime minister,
General Michel Aoun, waged a bloody seven month "war
of liberation" against Syria to dislodge its forces
from Beirut. A 1989 Saudi Arabian brokered peace
agreement, which put an end to that war, asked Syria
to remove its army to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. That
agreement was never enforced.
/// OPT /// Mr. Tueni addressed his editorial to Dr.
Bachar al Assad, son of Syrian President Hafez al
Assad, and his heir apparent. President Assad's son is
in charge of Syria's relations with Lebanon. /// END
OPT ///
Syria has never formally recognized Lebanese
independence. President Assad has periodically
referred to Syrians and Lebanese as "one people living
in two states." Syria has no embassy in Lebanon.
"Lebanon," wrote Gibrane Tueni, "must not be given to
Syria as the price of peace between Israel and Syria."
The editorial was making an allusion to any secret
negotiations between Israel and Syria to reach a peace
agreement.
Despite a 1949 armistice, both Syria and Lebanon are
still officially at war with Israel. Syria's chief
demand for achieving peace is that Israel return the
strategic Golan Heights, seized by Israel in 1967.
Lebanon has remained in the background of most Israel-
Syrian negotiations, despite the fact that it is the
only active battlefront with Israel. Hezbollah
guerillas continue to fight Israeli troops in a 15
kilometer long border strip of southern Lebanon.
(Signed)
NEB/EY/GE/JO
24-Mar-2000 08:59 AM EDT (24-Mar-2000 1359 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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