According to the Associated Press:
Syrian President Bashar Assad was expected to announce a troop pullback to eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border - but not a full withdrawal - in a speech Saturday to parliament, Syrian and Lebanese officials said Friday. The move would fall short of U.S. and Arab demands for a full withdrawal.
This is crap. President Bush, France and Saudi Arabia must each follow this "speech to the Syrian parliament" with speeches of their own denouncing Assad's position as "way too little and too damn late". Anything else would be playing right into Syria's plan to get out from under this problem while saving as much face as possible thus undermining the reason Bush is pushing so hard to get Syria out of Lebanon in the first place. A forced Syrian withdrawal will undermine Bashir Assad's authority at home thus weakening his totalitarian regime, hastening its demise.
UPDATE: President Bush on Friday flatly rejected any partial withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, saying he will not accept the kind of "half-measures" Damascus is expected to propose as a compromise.
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