Lebanon Update --

The view from Lebanon is far more optimistic:

While the world's attention has been focused elsewhere things are moving toward a resolution in Lebanon.

By Inal Ersan

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria has promised to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon by April 30 and will let a United Nations team verify the pullout, a U.N. envoy said Sunday....

"The declaration... is a decisive positive development in the Lebanese crisis," opposition member of parliament Nassib Lahoud said. "We hope that it opens a new chapter in the Lebanese-Syrian relations marked by the highest level of cooperation between two independent states."
....
Dozens of Syrian military trucks and some tanks on transporters rolled out of Lebanon Sunday, witnesses said.

They said troops had evacuated seven positions in and round the village of Anjar close to the border. But the Syrian intelligence headquarters in the village and a large army base in an ancient castle were still manned by Syrian personnel.

A Lebanese-Syrian military committee met in Beirut and Damascus in the past few days to agree on the withdrawal timetable and Lebanese army chief General Michel Suleiman met Assad in Damascus Saturday.

Sounds good, but note that the UN is involved [which cannot be a good thing -- they are not so hot at enforcing much of anything] and that the intelligence HQ is still functioning.

Read the whole thing here.

And Lebanese security forces are beginning to assert themselves against the Syrians.

BEIRUT: Lebanese police on Saturday chased and detained two Syrian policemen said to be close to the son of a former Syrian security chief in Lebanon, according to reports Sunday. The Mansourieh police mounted the chase as a dark blue Mitsubishi four-wheel-drive vehicle with smoked windows sped across the roundabout of Mkalles before dawn, stopping it at Beirut's Cola residential district.

Tinted car glass has been prohibited by the Lebanese authorities since the Syrian military and intelligence evacuation of Lebanon got underway three weeks ago. Such cars were mainly used by Syrian intelligence officers in Beirut and the rest of Lebanon....

Read about it here.

and

Lebanese troops took over a key Syrian checkpoint on the Beirut-Damascus highway on Monday and the Syrians, now committed to leaving Lebanon by April 30, prepared to abandon a nearby intelligence building.

This is important because there was concern that Syria might try to maintain military and intelligence forces in the Bekaa Valley. Now those forces are leaving.

Meanwhile pressure on Syria continues to mount.

The EU has stated that it will not sign a promised aid and trade pact with Syria until all forces are withdrawn from Lebanon....

and,

President Bush warned Syrian-backed leaders in Lebanon on Monday against postponing next month's elections, and demanded that Syrian troops and security forces fully withdraw from the country. "It's important for this election to take place on time," Bush said of the parliamentary poll due in May....

Hat tip, Ya Libnan [your one-stop shopping for daily Lebanon updates].

Now the question is -- what will Hizbollah do?

Tony at Across the Bay has a few ideas.

He notes that with the Syrian withdrawal Hizbollah's position is greatly weakened and writes:

it behooves Hizbullah to start an honest reconciliation with the rest of Lebanon, and stop playing the game of double-talk: claiming an above the fray nationalist stature, while simultaneously playing a specifically Shiite card (with all the elements of the Lebanese Shiite narrative). No one is buying it anymore....

Regarding the defiant rhetoric of Hizbollah's leader he writes:

Nasrallah is famous for this rhetoric, especially when everyone knows the outcome! It's a bid to score a cheap point, for free! The thing is that this is so tired and obvious, I don't know who he thinks he's kidding, except for those in the Shiite community who actually believe this kind of rhetoric....

At this stage, the Lebanese attitude is "whatever, as long as you'll eventually disarm!"

Tony's analysis and his links to a number of other commentators are here.

So Syria is withdrawing and without its major sponsor Hizbollah has little choice other than to cooperate, if only grudgingly.

Still, Iran has some influence with Hizbollah, and there is potential there for trouble. Whatever the situation, though, things for the moment seem to be moving toward a peaceful resolution and for that we can give thanks.

Stay tuned....