U.N. chief demands total pullout by Syrians

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents in Lebanon finished moving back to the eastern border region Thursday as the United Nations chief demanded that all of them leave the country before Lebanese elections in April.

It was the first time U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had set a deadline for Syria to completely remove the force it has had in its neighbor for nearly two decades, although President Bush and others previously made the same demand.

The Syrian withdrawal from northern and central Lebanon, which began March 8, comes ahead of Tuesday's Arab League summit in Algeria. Syria has been under Western and Arab pressure to get out of Lebanon since the Feb. 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri set off mass anti-Syrian protests in Beirut.

Earlier this month, the Syrian and Lebanese governments agreed Syrian troops and intelligence agents would shift to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon or to Syria itself before March 31.

"They have finished their redeployment," a senior Lebanese army officer told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. He refused to give details.

Of the 14,000 Syrian troops that were in Lebanon, at least 4,000 have returned to Syria during the past week. The rest are now in the Bekaa.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has promised to bring all the troops home, but has set no date. The deadline for the pullout is to be discussed by Syrian and Lebanese officers April 7.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, Annan said Syria's troops and intelligence agents must be gone before Lebanon begins staggered elections for parliament in April.

Bush also has demanded a complete pullout before the voting, arguing the elections could not be free and fair with Syrian troops in the country. In a resolution sponsored by the United States and France, the U.N. Security Council called in September for all foreign forces to leave Lebanon.

Syria has dominated Lebanese politics since the end of the 1975-90 civil war. Its soldiers entered Lebanon ostensibly as peacekeepers in the second year of the conflict, but they soon made Syria's government the power broker in its western neighbor.

In northern Lebanon, witnesses reported that Syrian intelligence officials cleared out of their last two offices in Tripoli early Thursday, a day after agents evacuated Beirut.

The withdrawal of Syrian intelligence agents has been a key demand of Lebanon's opposition, which held a demonstration by about a million people in central Beirut on Monday. The agents are seen as the main tool of Syrian control, making arrests, setting up roadblocks and dealing directly with Lebanon's politicians and citizens.

In a rare case of protest violence, assailants threw stones at buses and cars carrying demonstrators home from a pro-Syria rally that drew about 4,000 people in the western Bekaa town of Kheyara on Thursday. Two people were injured, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, the head of Lebanon's General Security Department, Jamil Sayyed, rejected calls that he resign for alleged negligence that allowed Hariri's assassination and offered to stand trial for the matter.

"All the heads of security institutions are ready for trial and accountability," said Sayyed, one of Lebanon's most influential security commanders.

Opposition leader Walid Jumblatt dismissed the offer as a joke, saying Lebanon's senior judges and security chiefs are controlled by Syrian military intelligence.

The opposition has accused Syrian leaders and Lebanon's pro-Syria government of playing at least an indirect role in the killing. Both deny it.