March 8, 2005
By Nadim Ladki
Yahoo News
Photo: Opposition protesters wave Lebanese flags during a demonstration against Syria in the Martyrs square Beirut, Lebanon, Monday March 7, 2005. About 100,000 anti-Syrian demonstrators converged on Martyrs' Square, repeatedly chanting 'Syria out!' and most waving Lebanon's distinctive red and white flag with a green cedar tree. Monday's demonstration marked three weeks since the Feb. 14 assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri that began a peaceful campaign against Syrian control. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central Beirut on Tuesday for a pro-Syrian rally called by Hizbollah that dwarfed previous protests demanding that Syrian troops quit Lebanon.
Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah urged the Lebanese opposition to join a national unity government and reject a U.N. demand for the Syrians to leave and his own militia to disarm.
"We call ... for the formation of a government of national unity and we ask the opposition to join it," he told the rally.
Nasrallah said no one in Lebanon feared the United States, whose troops left Beirut in 1984, a few months after a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines at their headquarters in the capital.
"We have defeated them in the past and if they come again we will defeat them again," he said, drawing chants of "Death to America" from the sea of demonstrators.
President Bush again told Syria to take its hands off Lebanon before parliamentary polls due by May.
"All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections for those elections to be free and fair," he said in a speech in Washington.
As the mainly Shi'ite Muslim crowds thronged Riad al-Solh square, Syrian forces began moving eastwards under a phased withdrawal plan announced on Monday, the Lebanese army said.
The huge Hizbollah rally was the first major show of popular support for Syria in Beirut since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri touched off daily anti-Syrian protests, mainly involving Maronite Christians.
Photo: A general view of Lebanese opposition protesters tent camp where some activists are vowing to maintain a vigil until the last Syrian soldier leaves the country at the Beirut's Martyrs square, Lebanon, Friday March 4, 2005. A few tents went up within days of the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and the number is increasing since a massive demonstration at the square on Feb. 28 forced the resignation of the Cabinet. A student said 'We will stay here until the Syrian army leaves. This is our only choice'. Syrian President Bashar Assad will address his country's parliament on Saturday, and a Lebanese politician said he was expected to announce a redeployment of troops to eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Those protests, which drew tens of thousands on Monday, take place in Martyrs Square, just 300 meters (yards) from the scene of the gathering organized by Hizbollah and its allies.
The rival rallies, each using the Lebanese cedar flag to show patriotism, reveal deep rifts in Lebanon over Syria's role and the future of Hizbollah, the country's last armed militia.
U.N. RESOLUTION SCORNED
Hizbollah officials and a pro-Syrian security source said one million people attended the rally and witnesses said the crowds were certainly in the hundreds of thousands.
Nasrallah said he had no problem with a Syrian pullout under the 1989 Taif Accord that ended Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, but would have no truck with a U.N. resolution adopted in September that called for a Syrian withdrawal and militia disarmament.
"If the mechanism for Syria's stay or withdrawal is within the Taif Accord then we are agreed," he told the rally.
"But those who insist on (resolution) 1559, we say to them your insistence is a revolt against the Taif Accord ... and that means a revolt against national consensus," he declared.
Nasrallah also urged France, which co-sponsored 1559 with the United States, to drop its support for the measure.
Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, condemned Hariri's killing but few have joined Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim opponents of Syria's dominant role in the country.
Shi'ites and many other Lebanese are proud of Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, for forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.
Popular agitation in Lebanon, combined with intense world pressure, has prompted Syria to announce plans to end its 29-year military presence in its smaller neighbor.
"Implemented immediately from this date is the ... withdrawal of Syrian forces from the existing areas to the Bekaa area," a Lebanese army statement said.
Witnesses reported troops on the move in several places on mountain ridges east of Beirut.
Photo: Opposition protesters carry anti-Syrian banners during a demonstartion against Syria in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday March 7, 2005. About 100,000 anti-Syrian demonstrators converged on Martyrs' Square, repeatedly chanting 'Syria out!' and most waving Lebanon's distinctive red and white flag with a green cedar tree. Monday's demonstration marked three weeks since the Feb. 14 assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri that began a peaceful campaign against Syrian control. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud agreed on Monday to shift Syrian troops to eastern Lebanon by March 31. A statement said the Syrian and Lebanese military would then decide how long the Syrians stayed.
A Syrian official source in Damascus said Syrian security and intelligence agents would leave along with the troops.
Syria's Lebanese and foreign critics say Syrian intelligence controls Lebanon behind a facade of state institutions.
Hizbollah, dubbed a terrorist group by Washington, began as an anti-Israel militia but is now also a political party with deputies in parliament and a network of charities.
Opposition leader Walid Jumblatt called for dialogue with Hizbollah, but said Syria must declare a withdrawal deadline.
"We want a clear-cut timetable for the pullout of Syrian troops," the Druze chieftain told reporters after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Berlin.
Syrian forces are credited with helping end the civil war that tore Lebanon apart. Christian, Muslim and Druze militias fought each other. Battles also erupted within rival communities. About 150,000 people are thought to have died.
(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Beirut, Inal Ersan in Damascus and Noah Barkin in Berlin)
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