BANGKOK, 25 April 2005 — Syria, accused by the United States of being a sponsor of terrorism, has formally acceded to a UN treaty designed to cut off funding for terrorist activities, UN officials said yesterday.
Syria’s instruments of ratification were submitted at a UN crime conference in Bangkok, where the financing of terrorism, increasingly through money laundering and organized crime, has been a key issue.
“It is an important decision, not only in the context of Syria,” Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters. “We are promoting vigorously the ratification and accession by all countries to all 12 conventions and protocols against terrorism. These steps are crucial,” he said.
Syria raises to 136 the number of parties to the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, one of 12 anti-terrorism conventions covering such areas as bombings, hostage takings and hijackings. Under the treaty, states must “make the provision of such funding a criminal offence under their domestic laws, and to confiscate assets allocated for terrorist purposes”.
Governments also have to cooperate with one another in investigations and extraditions, and freeze or seize funds “known to be allocated for terrorist purposes”.
Meanwhile, Syria withdrew hundreds of soldiers from Lebanon yesterday, entering the final hours of its 29-year military domination of its tiny neighbor days earlier than planned. Syrian forces abandoned several positions in the eastern Bekaa Valley yesterday and 150 vehicles carrying troops, tanks and artillery crossed the border out of Lebanon, witnesses said.
The last few hundred were dismantling the remaining camps and packing to leave overnight and today, effectively completing Syria’s withdrawal, security sources and witnesses said. Syria is racing to pull out of Lebanon in line with a UN Security Council resolution passed in September. It had vowed to go by April 30 but will be out about four days early.
Rustum Ghazaleh, the Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, and a token Syrian force will be the last to leave after a farewell ceremony in the Bekaa tomorrow. The military road that links the two countries will be closed behind them and the Lebanese Army will take over the Syrian intelligence headquarters in the town of Anjar. Under heavy rain overnight, around 100 Syrian military vehicles, carrying tanks and personnel carriers, trundled across the border.
