An international gathering in London warns Damascus that time is running out. Dina Ezzat reports The role of Syria in the Middle East might not have been a key issue on the agenda of the London Meeting on the Support of the Palestinian Authority but it was certainly a topic that many of the senior participants brought up in talks held on the fringe of the main meeting hall. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and French counterpart Michel Barnier -- whose countries co-authored UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that calls for an end to Syrian military presence in Lebanon -- discussed the issue and jointly urged Syria to start moving towards pulling out its troops from Lebanon sooner rather than later. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan raised the issue in long talks in which Moussa conveyed the promises he held in Damascus last month to move towards implementing its commitments in this respect. But the overall message that was being repeatedly stated in almost every single press conference as well as during many of the background press briefings and one-to-one interviews was that time is running out for Syria. "We have applied some sanctions on Syria. Currently there is international pressure. And we will see what else we can do," Rice told reporters in a press conference in London on Tuesday. According to Rice, more high-level meetings between the concerned international -- and for that matter regional -- parties will be held during the coming days and weeks to make sure that Syria abides by 1559. "But Syria knows what it has to do," Rice said. And, as a senior European diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly on the condition of anonymity, the US has promised to hold back public threats of further sanctions on Syria as a sign of good will. However, if Damascus was about "to play the long-phased redeployment game, then it could lose the support of those members of the international community that are pleading with Washington to exercise passion," the source said. Rice set out a list of demands that it expected Syria to meet in the very near future: Syria must stop its support of "terrorists" in Iraq, Palestine and South Lebanon; it must not restrict the will of the Lebanese people to live in sovereignty and peace and it must not fail to cooperate on anti-terrorism efforts. This was a list that found ample support from many of the European parties in London this week. In fact, some Arab sources also expressed covert support of the American-French growing impatience with what they termed "the Syrian failure to realise that the times have changed". Meanwhile, informed sources said that re-assuring messages had been sent from Damascus regarding its intention to comply with most of these requests but that it needed time to do so in a face-saving manner.
