Barak Decides to Withdraw Completely From Lebanon

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has decided that the planned Israeli troop withdrawal from south Lebanon will be carried out completely by July even if it would be unilateral, the Ha'aretz daily reported Thursday.

With or without a deal with Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon, Barak will pull Israeli soldiers from Lebanon to the international border between the two countries under United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, the report said.

The resolution was passed in 1978 after Israel waged a large- scale aggression to Lebanon in the name of wiping out Palestinian guerrillas in the country.

It calls for an immediate and unconditional Israeli pullout from all Lebanese territory and for a return of the full sovereignty of Lebanon.

Obviously, Barak's decision to redeploy Israeli army according to the resolution shows his preference for the withdrawal proposal submitted by his confidant Uri Lubrani, his coordinator of activities in Lebanon, over the army's proposal for a unilateral withdrawal code-named "Operation Morning Twilight."

According to media reports, the Israel Defense Forces' plan submitted to Barak by Chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz last week will keep some military outposts in areas about 500 meters north of the Israeli borderline.

In contrast, Lubrani argued that Israel should wrap its moves in international legitimacy and fulfill all the demands of the Resolution 425 to leave the responsibility for keeping peace along the border on the shoulders of Beirut.

Thus, he added, it will make it hard for Lebanese to rally international support should Israel be forced to respond to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla's attacks on its soldiers or northern towns. Israel set up a 15-kilometer-deep "security zone" in south Lebanon in 1985 with a self-claimed aim of preventing cross- border guerrilla attacks on its north. But mounting Israeli casualties have spurred a growing public pressure for a pullout.

The Israeli cabinet on March 5 gave backing to a key pledge made by Barak to withdraw from the buffer zone by July, with or without a peace deal with Syria.

The Israeli-Syrian peace talks, which resumed last December after a 45-month break, broke off again in January over a dispute on the fate of the Golan Heights, a strategic Syrian plateau seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

A new breakthrough in the Israeli-Syrian track is possible after U.S. President Bill Clinton made a surprise announcement on Monday that he would meet Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in Geneva on March 26.

Some U.S. and Israeli government sources had suggested that if there were no deal under way, the two leaders would not waste time to meet. So, the sources said, the resumption of Israeli-Syrian talks and the revival of Israeli-Lebanese negotiations are imminent.

A leading Saudi-owned Arab daily Asharq Awsat revealed Wednesday that Barak is likely to be invited to join the Clinton-Assad summit if their talks make major progress.

It was also reported that Lebanese President Emile Lahoud would also be invited to the Geneva conclave if substantive Lebanese issues were raised.

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