UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had promised to enforce an arms embargo on Hizbollah under a UN resolution that halted Israel's war with the Lebanese group.
"The president informed me that Syria supports Security Council Resolution 1701 and will help in its implementation," Annan told reporters after talks with Assad in Damascus.
"While stating Syrian objections to the presence of foreign forces along the Syrian-Lebanese border, the president committed to me that Syria will take all necessary measures to implement in full paragraph 15 of the resolution," Annan added, referring to a provision that bans illegal arms shipments to Lebanon. Annan said Syria would beef up border security and was ready to run joint patrols with the Lebanese army.
Syrian leaders have been angered by an Israeli demand for international troops to deploy on the Lebanese-Syrian border, the main conduit in the past for Hizbollah weapons supplies.
Lebanon, which has sent 8,600 soldiers to patrol the frontier, says it has no plans to ask UN troops to join them.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told reporters later that no weapons were crossing from his country to the guerrillas in Lebanon. "No arms are being smuggled to the resistance (Hizbollah) from Syria," he said. Annan later arrived in the Gulf state of Qatar, the only Arab state currently with a seat on the UN Security Council.
The UN chief said he had asked Syria, which along with Iran is Hizbollah's main ally, to use its influence to obtain the release of two Israeli soldiers whose capture by the guerrillas in July triggered the 34-day war in Lebanon. Hizbollah offered at the outset to swap the soldiers for Lebanese prisoners held in Israel after third-party mediation.
Ernst Uhrlau, head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, arrived in Beirut late on Thursday, a Lebanese security source said, fuelling speculation Germany may mediate as it has done between Israel and Hizbollah in the past.
Annan did not say if he had asked Assad to comply with other UN demands on Syria. These include demarcating its border with Lebanon, including in the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms area, claimed by Beirut, with Syria's verbal backing, but viewed by the United Nations as Syrian territory.
The Syrian president has previously ruled out any demarcation in Shebaa Farms while it is occupied by Israel. Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said the talks with Assad had covered "all tracks of the peace process" in the Middle East. "Out of this tragedy of war there is a real opportunity for peace that we all must not miss," Annan declared.
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Finland called for a revival of Middle East peace efforts. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told Reuters that Europe should seek new peace talks based on a return to Israel's 1967 borders except for agreed land swaps.
This is anathema to Israel which, with the acquiescence of the United States, wants to retain Jewish settlements in chunks of the occupied West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Israel has rebuffed repeated Syrian offers to renew talks on peace in return for the Golan and other occupied Arab land.
The first contingent of 880 Italian troops will land in Lebanon on Saturday to join 2,300 UNIFIL peacekeepers already policing the fragile truce between Israel and Hizbollah. The Spanish government said on Friday it planned to send 1,100 troops to Lebanon as part of a UN peacekeeping force. France, Belgium and Poland are also offering extra troops to the expanded UN force for south Lebanon.
Annan has said Israeli forces should withdraw fully from Lebanon as soon as 5,000 UN troops have arrived in the south. Israel's failure to defeat Hizbollah in the war continued to shake up Israeli politics when Defence Minister Amir Peretz defied Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by calling for an independent state inquiry into the way the government handled the war.
International donors meeting in Sweden pledged $500 million in aid to the Palestinian Territories. Donors pledged more than $940 million to help get Lebanon back on its feet at a separate Stockholm meeting on Thursday.