Opposition Slaps Karami for Doubting Army's Ability to Fill Syrian Vacuum

NaharNet

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has demanded from Syria a complete military withdrawal from Lebanon before April, dismissing an imminent redeployment operation announced by the Assad regime that would reportedly leave only 2,000 troops stationed indefinitely in the Bekaa Valley. Annan set his first purported deadline for Syria's exit in an interview recorded by Al Arabiya network, excerpts of which were aired Thursday evening. The station said it planned to broadcast the full text Friday. But Annan has denied in New York that he had set any specific deadline for the Syrian withdrawal. The controversy over Annan's quotes followed a flurry of statements by Lebanon's Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Murad and Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Walid Moallem in Beirut and Damascus Thursday on an imminent redeployment operation to begin within hours. Murad said the pullback will be staged from the northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest after Beirut, and from the central mountain ridge overlooking the capital in the Aley district to east Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Murad did not elaborate beyond asserting that the imminent redeployment, the sixth in three years, would not involve Syria's intelligence services, although President Bush had insisted in his latest dose of pressure on the Assad regime that the withdrawal be inclusive of Syria's "secret services." Moallem said Syria's stage-by-stage pullout was designed to give the Lebanese army and security departments enough time to take over the vacated areas and avoid a security vacuum that could reignite the civil war. He said the "provocative stance" by Lebanon's opposition toward Syria would reflect adversely on the whole of Lebanon. Premier Karami has chime in, stunning the nation by televised remarks in which he bluntly said the Lebanese army was not ready yet to fill the vacuum if Syria withdrew its army and intelligence apparatus in one-go. Karami said the army, faced by a Syrian withdrawal in one sweep, might collapse along the same sectarian lines that triggered off the 1975-1990 civil war. His remarks, along with Moallem's threats, have infuriated the opposition, whose spokesmen ridiculed a Lebanese government inventing alibis to exonerate Syria from guilt in ex-Premier Hariri's assassination. Hariri's blood, the spokesmen asserted, had introduced a sterling Christian-Muslim unity that abolished any concept of renewed civil warfare.