By ALBERT AJI, Associated Press Writer DAMASCUS, Syria – Syria will withdraw troops from mountain and coastal areas in Lebanon in line with a 1989 agreement, Lebanon’s defense minister said Thursday amid international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.  Lebanese Defense Minister Abdul-Rahim Murad said the troops will be withdrawn to the eastern Bekaa Valley on the Syrian border, but he gave no timeframe. Lebanese and Syrian military officers have begun meetings to define “the dates and the way” the withdrawal will take place, Murad said, adding that the pullback was in line with the Arab-brokered Taif agreement that ended Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon – Lebanon’s pro-Syrian prime minister said Wednesday he was willing to resign in an effort to contain growing anger at his government and Damascus over the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Prime Minister Omar Karami made the offer to step down in a newspaper interview. “I am ready to resign on condition that we agree on a new government in order to avoid falling into a constitutional vacuum,” he told the daily An-Nahar. Karami said he will seek a vote of confidence in Parliament on Monday, when lawmakers meet to discuss Hariri’s assassination in a Feb. 14 bombing in Beirut that also killed 16 others. The debate was requested by opposition legislators.

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) — Lebanon’s president says his government will share with a U.N. inquiry any evidence gathered on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan received a letter from Lebanese President Emile Lahoud on Monday promising that support, said spokesman Fred Eckhard.An investigative team is expected to arrive in Lebanon shortly, said a U.N. spokesman. It will begin work toward a report requested urgently by the U.N. Security Council on the “circumstances, causes and consequences” of the explosion that killed Hariri on February 14.

MAINZ, Germany (AFP) – US President George W. Bush said Syria must withdraw its troops and “secret services” from Lebanon but that he would await the response from Damascus before seeking any new UN sanctions.  “Syria must withdraw not only the troops but its secret services from Lebanon,” Bush said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Bush added that Damascus must not try to influence upcoming parliamentary elections in Lebanon. “Syria in so doing will indicate the other point that the president of France and I wanted to make and that is those elections that are coming up need to be free, without any Syrian influence.”

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss on Friday voiced great regret over some Lebanese to exploit the assassination of ex-prime Minister Rafic Hariri to serve flagrant political purposes. In a statement issued on Friday, al-Hoss said “The assassination mustn’t be invested to deepen the national division which Hariri was avoiding to enter in till the last moment of his life because he was aware of the dangerous results of what is going on for the destiny of the national unity in Lebanon.”

BEIRUT (AFP) – Lebanon’s embattled pro-Syrian government said that it was unlikely to cooperate with a newly appointed UN commission of inquiry into the assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri and hit out at France over opposition calls for an “uprising”. The announcement threatened to put Lebanon on a collision course with both the former colonial power and the United States, which is demanding an independent investigation into the bombing, in which 14 other people also died. Asked if his government would work with the UN team to be headed by senior Irish police officer Deputy Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, Defence Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad said: “I do not think so.

BEIRUT (AFP) – The top US envoy to the Middle East called for the “complete and immediate” withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and demanded an investigation into the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. “Mr Hariri’s death should give renewed impetus to achieving a free, independent and sovereign Lebanon,” Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns told reporters. “What that means is the immediate and complete implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, and what that means is the complete and immediate withdrawal by Syria,” he said after talks with Foreign Minister Mahmud Hammud.

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon – Screaming and weeping mourners clambered around the flag-draped coffin carrying the body of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as hundreds of thousands of people turned out for his burial Wednesday, two days after a huge bomb killed the man credited with rebuilding post-civil war Lebanon.  Suspicions over Syrian involvement in Hariri’s assassination further charged the atmosphere, with his family and supporters warning officials of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government to stay away. Internationally, pressure mounted to find his killers, with Washington recalling its ambassador and the U.N. Security Council demanding Lebanon catch bring those responsible for Hariri’s slaying. More than 200,000 people crowded into central Beirut square around the towering Mohammed al-Amin Mosque, which Hariri built. It is also where the billionaire businessman who was Lebanon’s prime minister for 10 of the 14 years following the end of the 1975-90 civil was is to be buried.

By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer BEIRUT, Lebanon – Syria’s grip over Lebanon appears to be slipping under international pressure and increasingly bold Lebanese calls for Damascus to pull its army out. With the calls growing increasingly belligerent, Syria gave a pointed reminded that it still wields control, with its 15,000 troops deployed across the country. “The opposition has crossed all the lines,” warned Lebanon’s pro-Syria prime minister, Omar Karami. “If they think that Syria is now weak, this is not true. … We will show them,” Karimi told reporters, without elaborating.

By David Gardner It is midnight on Saturday in downtown Beirut and the Buddha Bar is heaving. A cavernous copy of its Parisian namesake, with a 20ft-high Buddha statue as its presiding spirit, the bar is just the latest incarnation of the Lebanese craving for novelty and gift for fun. The son of a Maronite Christian warlord assassinated, allegedly by the Syrians, during the 1975-90 civil war, thrusts his way through the throng to the bar with the help of a bodyguard out of central casting: black T-shirt, tailored leather jacket, wrap-around shades and designer stubble. A vast Johnnie Walker whisky icon towers over the bar itself, causing one regular patron to observe that,