Shara: Too early to discuss borders with Lebanon

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CAIRO - Syria said Tuesday it was prepared to discuss with the Lebanese side the controversial issue of their common borders but only after bilateral relations improve.

"We should not preempt issues on the agenda of bilateral ties between Syria and Lebanon," Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara told reporters during a press conference with his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Abul Gheit.

He was responding to a question following talks in Cairo between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

The two leaders met amid increasing public hostility in Lebanon to Syria over its alleged role in the assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri and the murders of three more anti-Syrian figures in Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said in October that his country and Syria had opened talks on establishing diplomatic ties and demarcation of their common borders, a move supported by the international community.

Shara denied that Damascus was playing down the significance of the border issue. "These are important points, but there are more important and pressing points such as improving the climate between the two countries" he said.

A demarcation would defuse tension over the continued presence of Syrian troops in some disputed areas and would help reduce alleged arms smuggling from Syria to militants groups in Lebanon and elsewhere.

Border issues between Syria and Lebanon have wide-ranging implications, as they also involve Israel, which occupies the Shebaa Farms, a small territory seized from Syria in 1967 but now claimed by Lebanon.

Syria was the key power-broker in Lebanon for nearly three decades.

It ended its 29-year military presence there in April after the assassination of Hariri, whose murder sparked a domestic and international outcry.

The Lebanese opposition to the former pro-Syrian leadership has long called for an exchange of embassies between the two countries, which have never established diplomatic relations since their independence in the 1940s.