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Israel downplays south Lebanon Syrian troop threat

Israel rejects Syrian suggestion over south Lebanon troops deployment

JERUSALEM: Israeli officials played down on Sunday a suggestion by Lebanon's defence minister that Syrian troops might be deployed in south Lebanon in the event of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal.

Lebanese Defence Minister Ghazi Zaiter said on Saturday that Beirut might ask Syria to deploy the troops to put Tel Aviv with-in range of Syrian rockets. He said the suggestion was his personal opinion and not Lebanon's official policy.

Israeli Prime Minsister Ehud Barak's office declined comment but political sources quoted the Israeli leader as telling his cabinet: "I don't imagine that a deployment of the Syrian army along the Israeli border is realistic."

Israeli cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio: "The prime minister and government are firm in their view to pull our boys out of Lebanon by July 7, 2000...There won't be any change, certainly not from a declaration of this sort."

Barak has pledged to end Israel's 22-year-old occupation of south Lebanon by that date. He has said this could happen with or without an agreement with Syria, the main power in Lebanon with 35,000 troops.

Syria is reluctant to lose its trump card of deadly Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla attacks on Israeli occupation troops in bargaining for return of the Israeli-held Golan Heights. It has cautioned Israel against a unilateral withdrawal.

"I imagine that these words of Zaiter are part of some of the distress on the other side," the cabinet sources quoted Barak as saying. Barak said he also remained pessimistic about the prospects of reviving negotiations with Syria.

Peace talks between Israel and Syria stalled in January after only two rounds, following a gap of more than four years.

Lebanon and Syria have coordinated their agendas for peace with Israel and say that neither would sign any agreement without the other.

Lebanese guerrilla groups, backed by Syria and Iran, are waging a war of attrition against the Israeli troops in a 15 km (nine mile)-wide occupation zone established by Israel in southern Lebanon.

Cabinet minister Matan Vilnai, a former leading general, dismissed the suggestion Syria would deploy troops along the border.

"There are clear red lines in Lebanon that were set already in the late '70s. The Syrians have always stuck to them. I imagine they will also go on doing so," he told Army Radio.

Other Israeli cabinet ministers said Tel Aviv was already within range of missiles in Syria itself.-Reuters