15 October 2004	Friday	29 Shaban 1425

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14: The United States and France circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution on Thursday aimed at putting fresh pressure on Syria to pull its estimated 17,000 troops out of Lebanon.

The draft would ask Secretary General Kofi Annan to report every three months on the issue as a follow-up to a Sept 2 council resolution that demanded Syria withdraw its forces. Syria ignored the resolution.

France and the United States drew up the measure after they failed last week to persuade Pakistan and Algeria to sign onto a council statement welcoming a report from Annan that said that Syria had not withdrawn the troops and had given no timetable on when it would do so.

A statement needs agreement from all 15 council members while a resolution requires a minimum of nine votes and no veto from any of the five permanent members. The new draft resolution "notes with concern" Annan's report that the requirements set out in the Sept. 2 resolution were not met and "urges relevant parties to implement fully all provisions of the resolution."

It asks Mr Annan to monitor the situation and report back on a quarterly basis. The Syrian government has maintained political control over Lebanon since it intervened in 1976, at Beirut's request, to quell a civil war. But the issue came to the fore on Sept. 2 when the Security Council tried unsuccessfully to head off Lebanon's parliament from amending the constitution and extending the term of Syrian-backed President Emile Lahoud for three years after his current six-year term expires in November.

Both Syria and Lebanon say the matter is their own affair. Syria's UN envoy, Fayssal Mekdad, said the Security Council was getting a bad reputation in the Arab world because it failed to enforce measures against Israel, and only enforced them against Arab nations.

He said it was "shameful" to adopt the initial resolution "and shameful to follow it up." The Sept. 2 resolution also called for militias in Lebanon to be disbanded, whether the Hizbollah organization or Palestinian militant groups.

Lebanon and Syria defend Hizbollah - a main force in ending Israel's 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000 - as legitimate resistance to Israel, which they say continues to occupy Lebanese land in the disputed Shebaa Farms border zone. But the United Nations says the Shebaa Farms area is part of Syria, unless the two nations sign a pact changing the border, which they have not done. -Reuters