Egypt, Syria hold surprise talks
September 15, 2004
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad linked UN calls for Syrian troops to leave Lebanon to their own demands for Israeli troops to leave Arab lands.
After the presidents' met during Mubarak's hurriedly arranged one-day visit to Syria Wednesday, Egypt's semiofficial Middle East News Agency quoted Mubarak spokesman Maged Abdel Fattah as saying the presidents discussed the Sept. 2 resolution of the UN Security Council, which effectively called for Syria to withdraw its 20,000 troops from Lebanon and allow presidential elections to be held as scheduled.
Lebanese legislators had defied the UN resolution, voting Sept. 4 to extend the term of pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud for another three years without an election.
Mubarak and Assad "agreed on the necessity of dealing with Security Council resolution 1559 in a realistic and practical framework that would lead at the same time to the end of the Israeli occupation of all Syrian and Lebanese territories," Fattah was quoted as saying.
Israel has held Syria's Golan Heights since the 1967 Mideast war and Syria wants the land returned in exchange for any peace deal. Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in 2000 after an 18-year occupation, but Lebanon and Syria say it still holds Lebanese land: the Chebaa Farms. The United Nations says Chebaa Farms is Syrian and that Syria and Israel should negotiate its fate.
Syrian forces entered Lebanon in 1976 as peacekeepers during the 1975-90 civil war, and have stayed ever since, ensuring Damascus's influence over its neighbors' politics.
In Damascus Wednesday, Mubarak and Assad also expressed "support for Lebanon's exercising its sovereignty and its right to administer its internal affairs," Fattah was quoted as saying in an apparent endorsement of Lebanon argument that the presence of Syrian troops on its territory is a matter of mutual agreement.
MENA said the presidents also discussed a meeting of Palestinian factions that Egypt is due to host at the end of the month. Egypt is trying to persuade the factions to agree on a cease-fire with Israel in order to revive the "road map" plan for a Palestinian state.
The UN resolution, which was sponsored by the United States, France, Britain and Germany, had provoked a divisive debate at the Arab League in Cairo on Tuesday. Jordan's Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, supported by Gulf Arab states, pushed for the 22-nation body to endorse the UN resolution in the face of opposition from Syria and Lebanon.
According to a league official who witnessed the debate in closed session, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa argued that support for the UN resolution would lead to US intervention in all Arab matters.
The league, which adopts decisions by consensus, ended its meeting with a statement that did not mention the UN resolution and expressed support for the "special relations between Syria and Lebanon."
Wednesday, the newspaper of Syria's ruling Baath party, Al-Baath, applauded the league's statement and launched a jibe at Jordan's Muasher.
The paper said that support for Syria among an unnamed minister's colleagues caused him a "headache and kept him away in his room in order not to sweat hard." Muasher had left the league meeting to be treated at a Cairo hospital for intestinal cramps.
Mubarak's brief visit to Syria was his first trip abroad since he returned from back surgery in Germany in early July.
SOURCE: Jerusalem Post