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Syria: U.S. Pressuring Nation on Israel (BASSEM MROUE, October 24, 2004, Associated Press)

The United States is increasing its pressure against Syria to force the Arab state to stop backing anti-Israeli resistance in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, Syria's information minister said Saturday. [...]

The United States and United Nations have called on Syria to remove its troops from neighboring Lebanon. Washington has also accused Damascus of not doing enough to stop anti-coalition fighters from entering another Arab neighbor, Iraq, and supporting anti-Israeli militants, like Lebanon's Hezbollah.

"Washington wants Damascus to change its stance toward the Lebanese resistance, the Palestinian question and the just and comprehensive peace, which means ending (Israeli) occupation" of all lands captured during the 1967 Mideast war, said Dakhlallah.

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Syria's grip on Lebanon tested: The dominance of Damascus in Lebanese politics gives rise to a new opposition leader. (Nicholas Blanford, 10/25/04, CS Monitor)

Walid Jumblatt has always been an unconventional figure. A former ally of the Soviet Union despite his aristocratic lineage and feudal role as head of Lebanon's Druze community, he has survived assassination attempts and political marginalization, treading a path through the intrigue that colors Lebanon's turbulent politics.

And now Mr. Jumblatt has emerged as the most vocal opponent of Syria's long-running hegemony over Lebanon, at a time when Damascus is under mounting pressure from the United Nations and Washington to stop meddling in the affairs of its tiny neighbor.

With the resignation of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri last week and the slow progress in forming a new Syrian-backed government in Beirut, Lebanon is grappling with its gravest political crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Almost a quarter of this country's 128-seat parliament has boycotted consultations to form the new government. And the deadlock comes as the US has criticized as "inappropriate" the decision to replace Mr. Hariri with Omar Karami, a 70-year-old former premier with close ties to Syria.

Jumblatt paints a bleak future for Lebanon in the coming months. "The indications are bad," he says, speaking in his sprawling ancestral home in this village deep in the forested Chouf mountains south of Beirut. "The security indications are bad, the economic indications are bad ... and now slowly but surely we are living in a police state in Lebanon, similar to Arab regimes. We don't want to be another Arab regime."