ARABS-UN - Mar 23 - Annan Cites Syrian Vow To Pull Troops Out Of Lebanon.

UN Sec Gen Kofi Annan, told an Arab League summit yesterday that he was encouraged by a Syrian pledge to "comply fully" with UN Security Council resolutions demanding its military withdrawal from Lebanon. Annan, who met Bashar Al Assad at the summit in Algiers, said earlier that the Syrian Pres promised to come up with a precise timetable for the withdrawal of all its troops and intelligence agents at the start of April. Syria has already completed a partial withdrawal of its 14,000-strong force and moved the rest to the Bekaa valley in Lebanon's east. But after weeks of anti-Syrian demonstrations over the killing in February of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri, Damascus remains under strong international pressure to complete the process before Lebanese parliamentary elections in May. Annan described Hariri as "a formidable statesman and vital presence in the international community". He told the summit that a more thorough investigation might be necessary into his death, which many Lebanese accuse Syria of orchestrating. "Within the next few days I expect to release the report of the fact-finding mission I established in the wake of the killing and I believe a comprehensive investigation may well also be necessary", he said. Diplomats said Egypt's Pres Hosni Mubarak also pressed Syria to take faster action to defuse a crisis that has drawn Washington deeper into regional affairs than Arab governments would like. But earlier efforts by both Egypt and Saudi Arabia to rally the region around the 1989 Taif accords - setting the terms of Syria's presence in Lebanon at the end of its civil war - bore little fruit. Arab leaders instead reiterated in a final declaration at the Algiers summit their "absolute solidarity" Mar 23 with Syria in the face of threats from Washington. In a rambling speech that dominated the concluding session, the Libyan leader Muammer Gadaffi, defended Syria's role in Lebanon and launched an attack on the Security Council's double standards, calling it a "terrorist organisation". The crisis in Lebanon was not formally addressed at the summit, which focused on relaunching a three-year-old Arab initiative offering full diplomatic ties in return for Israel's withdrawal from occupied territory and the creation of a Palestinian state.