WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President George W. Bush met with the patriarch of the Maronite church, Nasrallah Sfeir, and reaffirmed that Syria must withdraw its troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon. “I assured his eminence that United States policy is to work with friends and allies to insist that Syria completely leave Lebanon, Syria take all her troops out of Lebanon, Syria take her intelligence services out of Lebanon, so that the election process will be free and fair,” Bush said. The 85-year-old Sfeir, a leading figure in the Lebanese Christian opposition, was making his first visit to Bush’s White House even as Syria has begun to pull back its roughly 14,000 soldiers from Lebanon.