Annan: no timetable in UN document on Syria pullout
08 Mar 2005 21:29:14 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold 
UNITED NATIONS, March 8 (Reuters) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday the U.N. resolution demanding Syrian troops leave Lebanon did not give a timetable for withdrawal, as President George W. Bush has demanded. 
Annan said his envoy, Norwegian Terje Roed-Larsen would arrive in Lebanon and Syria this week to report to the U.N. Security Council on the implementation of resolution 1559, adopted on Sept. 2, which called for foreign troops to leave Lebanon. 
Bush has demanded Syria pull troops out of Lebanon before Lebanese parliamentary elections in May. 
The resolution requires them to withdraw, Annan told reporters. I cannot get into the date you are asking me to set. 
The resolution is clear that there should be full withdrawal, Annan said before embarking on a trip to Madrid and then to Israel and the West Bank. 
I am sending my envoy there to sit with them and discuss full and complete withdrawal, he added. 
Adopted at the initiative of France and the United States, the resolution also called for the Lebanese government to extend control over all its territory, a reference to Hizbollah guerrillas who run the south. 
Annan said the Lebanese government, had to undertake any disarmament of Hizbollah, not the United Nations, which has 2,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. 
But he said one needed to recognize that Hizbollah was a force in Lebanese society one will have to factor in as we implement the resolution. 
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central Beirut for a pro-Syrian rally called by Hizbollah, Lebanon's last armed militia that is backed by Syria and Iran and called a terrorist group by Washington. It dwarfed previous protests demanding Syrian troops leave Lebanon. 
Annan also said no one had discussed with him expanding the U.N. peacekeeping force in the south to monitor Syria's withdrawal, as suggested by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last week. 
That is an issue the Security Council will have to decide, whether they want to send in an international force or not, he said. But I have no such mandate.