U.N. Begins Last-Ditch Effort to Get Syria Out and Hizbullah Disarmed

The U.N. Security Council begins a last-ditch effort in New York on Monday to decide how to coerce Lebanon into disarming Hizbullah and Syria into withdrawing its entire armed force from Lebanon. A Kuwait newspaper has in the meantime warned President Assad's regime against intransigence, saying it risks meeting the same dramatic fate of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. All 15 members of the Security Council are expected to hammer out a unanimously endorsed presidential statement to be announced late night Monday in order to stop France and the United States from convening a Council session on Tuesday to vote on a new resolution tougher than 1559, An Nahar reported. In Kuwait, the newspaper Al Siyassah has strongly criticized Syria's refusal to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and warned that the Assad regime should learn the lesson of Saddam Hussein's ouster in Iraq to avert meeting the same fate. "Is there really any hope that the Syrian regime... will learn from previous examples and immediately... withdraw from Lebanon so as to save itself and not collapse like Saddam's regime," Al-Siyassah wondered in a page-one editorial Sunday, which was highlighted by the Beirut press on Monday. It concluded that there is no such hope "because the Syrian regime... in essence is similar to Saddam's regime, particularly in its failure to understand international realities." The editorial could reflect adversely on Kuwait's relations with Syria.(Naharnet-AFP)

Beirut, Updated 18 Oct 04, 10:46