By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon – A visiting senior U.S. State Department official on Sunday brushed off accusations Washington’s calls for Syria to leave Lebanon as soon as possible amounted to interference in Lebanese internal affairs.  David Satterfield, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, was scheduled to meet Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud to convey the U.S. demand for a full and immediate withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and the need for a thorough inquiry into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Satterfield, pressed after a meeting with Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, head of the Maronite Catholic Church, about whether Washington considers there to be a deadline for a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, said: “We want to see it take place as soon as possible.”

He noted the U.N. Security Council called has called for the immediate withdrawal of foreign forces.

Satterfield said the international community is “calling for an end to foreign interference in Lebanese affairs. It is not … interference for the world to talk of the need for Lebanese to live in freedom.”

Satterfield’s comments came as Lebanon’s pro-Syrian government was preparing for a showdown in Parliament and on the streets with a political opposition emboldened by the anti-Syrian sentiment after the Feb. 14 assassination of Hariri. Pro-Syrian groups called for street protests Monday against Satterfield’s visit.

Parliament is scheduled to hold a vote of confidence on the government on Monday. The opposition has urged supporters to demonstrate at the main downtown square near Hariri’s grave at the same time; banks and businesses also were expected to go on strike in a show of the business community’s anger about the killing of the billionaire tycoon who long was the guiding force behind the Lebanese economy.

Though the pro-Syrian government has a supportive parliament, Damascus and Beirut are under considerable domestic and international pressure to respond to the calls for Syria to ease its political and military grip on its tiny neighbor. Syria has roughly 15,000 troops in Lebanon and has said it would pull its forces back closer to its border, but that it won’t bring them home. It gave not timeframe for the pullback.

Prime Minister Omar Karami told Al-Arabiya television in remarks broadcast Sunday that the situation was open to all possibilities, saying “the government may or may not survive” the vote of confidence.

The assassination of Lebanon’s most prominent politician has plunged the country into its worst political crisis in years. It sparked anti-government and anti-Syrian protests as well as outrage by the international community, which demanded an investigation and called anew on Syria to withdraw its army from Lebanon.

Early Sunday, vandals destroyed a bust of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad in the southern village of Qana, police officials said. The officials did not elaborate.

The opposition accused Syria and Lebanon’s pro-Syrian government of having a hand in Hariri’s assassination. Both governments have denied any involvement.

There have been no visible Syrian military moves since Thursday’s announcement that the Syrian army will withdraw from western Lebanon to eastern areas near the Syrian border in line with a 1989 Arab-brokered agreement that ended the 1975-90 civil war.