U.N. Security Council adopts resolution 1559

03 Sep 2004 00:19:39

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council narrowly adopted a resolution on Thursday telling Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and warning against outside interference in Beirut's presidential election.
The council voted 9-0 with six abstentions, the minimum vote possible, to approve the U.S.-drafted resolution after the United States and co-sponsor France agreed under pressure not to mention Syria by name, although it is the only country with foreign forces in Lebanon.
The resolution aims to head off a move in Lebanon's parliament to amend the constitution and extend the term of Syrian-backed Lebanese President Emile Lahoud for three years after his current six-year term expires in November.
Lebanon's 128-member assembly has set a vote on the constitutional change for Friday and officials said the amendment would easily win the required two-thirds majority.
Syria dominates Lebanon politically and has some 17,000 soldiers in the country after flooding Lebanon with its troops during the 1975-1990 civil war.
"We believe Lebanon should be allowed to determine its own future and assume control of its own territory. Yet the Lebanese people are still unable to exercise their rights as a free people to make those choices and to take those steps as a nation," U.S. Ambassador John Danforth told the council.
"What the Lebanese people and we have witnessed over the past week in terms of Syrian actions is a crude mockery of this principle. It is clear that Lebanese parliamentarians have been pressured and even threatened by Syria and its agents to make them comply," Danforth said.
A senior Lebanese official asked council members to withdraw the resolution, saying the U.N. body had never interfered in this manner in the internal affairs of a member-state.
Mohammed Issa, Lebanon's secretary-general for foreign affairs, said Syrian troops were in the country at his government's request to help rebuff "radical action emanating from Israel."
Syria certainly did not need to leave when Israel was still on Lebanese territory, he said. But the United Nations decided in 2000 that Israel had withdrawn and that its troops in the Shaaba farms area were in Syria, not Lebanon, unless the two countries decided to change the border, which they have not.