A Lebanese soldier stands in front of a bus carrying Syrian soldiers into Syria at the Lebanese border point of Masnaa, east of Beirut, on April 26.

The last Syrian soldiers left Lebanon after a ceremony at a military air base in the eastern town of Rayaq, in the presence of top commanders from both armies.

Overjoyed residents threw flowers as the once-feared head of Syrian intelligence forces in Lebanon, Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh, drove back home and Lebanese army troops were deployed in major cities evacuated by the Syrian army.

Syria wound up the withdrawal ahead of schedule, having pledged April 3 to complete the operation by the end of the month.

A U.N. team was due in Beirut on April 27 to prepare the ground for its commission probing the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on Feb. 14, which was blamed by many on the Lebanese regime and its political masters in Damascus.

Syria has been the main power broker in Lebanon since it first deployed troops as a buffer force a year after the 1975 outbreak of the civil war, and Damascus further tightened its grip after the conflict ended in 1990.

But after the Hariri killing, Damascus came under intense pressure from both the international community and Lebanon's opposition to withdraw its 14,000 troops, the last remnants of a force which during the war had numbered some 40,000.

The Japan Times Weekly: April 30, 2005
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