Iran's troop withdrawal has been so dramatic that U.S. and European officials describe Iranian troops as a nonissue in the current U.N., U.S. and European diplomatic efforts to pressure Syria to end its military domination of Lebanon.
International diplomatic efforts on Lebanon are now focused on getting Iran to use its influence to get Hezbollah to complete an evolution into a political movement and get its militia to lay down its weapons, U.S. and European officials said. Disarming all militias in Lebanon is a requirement of Resolution 1559.
"We want all foreign influences out of Lebanon," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month.
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During their meeting in Paris last week, French President Jacques Chirac urged Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to help encourage Hezbollah to focus only on political and social efforts, said sources familiar with the talks.
In a surprise move last month, President Bush suggested that Washington might be willing to tolerate Hezbollah's political role if it complied with the U.N. resolution and renounced terrorism, as the Palestine Liberation Organization did in 1988 in a move that opened the way for its recognition by the United States.
The Bush administration was struck by the Hezbollah rally last month in which participants waved Lebanon's red-and-white flag -- not Iranian or Syrian flags or even Hezbollah's banner, which is similar to the emblem of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, U.S. officials said.
On the issue of destabilizing influences in Lebanon, U.S. and European officials say they are now far more concerned about Syria's increasing role in Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appealed for assistance from Palestinians in the camps to prevent Syrian intelligence from triggering incidents that might ignite internal turmoil as Lebanon approaches an election later this spring, said a European envoy who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Abbas is concerned that new trouble in Lebanon might derail the fragile new effort to renew the peace process and Israel's pledge to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, the envoy said.
