Syria's troop presence in Lebanon reached its lowest level in three decades as 2,000 more soldiers returned home in recent days, the Lebanese military said on Monday. The move puts Damascus on track to have all its forces out before Lebanese parliamentary elections in May -- a key US and UN demand.
Despite the continued troop withdrawal, pressure mounted against Syria and its allied Lebanese government.
Lebanon's acting Foreign Ministry chief, Butros Asaker, flew to New York to attend a UN Security Council session aimed at forming an international inquiry into former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri's Feb. 14 assassination.
Lebanon has grudgingly agreed to go along with a UN-led inquiry, which has the potential to embarrass both Syrian and Lebanese authorities, who many here believe were involved in Hariri's death. Both governments deny such claims.
A UN fact-finding mission has already criticized Syria for creating the conditions for Hariri's death and poured scorn on the Lebanese investigation into the killing.
Some 5,000 female activists staged a noisy march in downtown Beirut demanding Syria end its control over Lebanon, which stretches back to the early stages of this country's 1975-'90 civil war.
"Syria get out of Lebanon," shouted the women while walking about 1km from the seafront street where Hariri's motorcade was blown up to his grave in Martyrs' Square.
Syria is believed to have about 8,000 troops in eastern Lebanon following the return home of 2,000 soldiers during recent days, a Lebanese military official said on condition of anonymity. Immediately before Hariri's death, about 14,000 Syrian troops were in Lebanon. At their peak they numbered about 40,000.
Also Monday, Syrian soldiers dismantled eight positions near the eastern city of Baalbek, while about 25km to the north in Chaat, more troops loaded goods into 10 trucks, each towing an anti-aircraft gun.
The official said the Lebanese-Syrian Military Commission will meet next week to agree on the second phase of the military withdrawal, which is expected to see the complete removal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. About 4,000 soldiers left in the withdrawal's first phase that ended on March 17.
Pro-Syrian Lebanese Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Murad said the pullout will continue "until all the Syrian army has entered Syrian territory."
The UN and Washington are demanding a full Syrian withdrawal before Lebanese parliamentary elections due to begin in April and go through May.
"The full pullout from Lebanon will remove any pretext claiming that Syria influences Lebanese elections," Syrian political analyst Imad Fawzi al-Shueibi said.
"Syria wants to push away any possibility of being a target" for US or international pressures, he added.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS