Around the World

Israel to remove troops in Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's government welcomed yesterday's Israeli Cabinet decision to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon by July, but said it would prefer that the move come as part of a settlement to bring peace to the last active Arab-Israeli war front.

Some Lebanese, meanwhile, treated the Israeli decision with disbelief.

''You mean this is a fact? The Israelis will withdraw by July?'' said Mohammed Abdallah, a businessman from the occupied town of Khiam who works abroad and was visiting family in Beirut. ''You mean we'll spend summer in the village?''

In 1985, Israel set up an occupied buffer zone in Lebanon near the northern Israeli border to protect its border towns from guerrilla attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said since he took office last May that he would withdraw, and yesterday's unanimous Cabinet decision backed him up. The Israeli decision came as fighting raged in southern Lebanon. Israeli warplanes blasted suspected guerrilla targets following guerrilla attacks Saturday night and yesterday morning. An Israeli soldier was wounded and two militants were reportedly killed in the fighting.

''Whether or not the Israeli government decision is a maneuver, our position has been and continues to be to welcome Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon any time,'' Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss said in a statement. ''And if we prefer that this withdrawal come as part of a settlement, that is because we do not trust Israeli intentions if the withdrawal happens without an agreement.''

Hoss was apparently referring to an overall settlement involving Israel and Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. Syria resumed negotiations with Israel in December, but talks broke off one month later.

While Syria wants Israel out of Lebanon, it does not want Israel to pull out unilaterally. Israel maintains that Syria uses the low-level war in Lebanon to pressure Israel to give back all of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau the Israelis captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

A statement that went along with the Israeli Cabinet's decision said the government would ''act to ensure'' that the pullout comes within the framework of a peace deal with Syria. But the statement and Israeli officials made clear the withdrawal would take place if a deal were not reached.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa predicted that after a withdrawal, Lebanese guerrillas would stop attacks against Israel. ''If Israel withdrew, there will be no resistance,'' he told Lebanese Future TV in an interview.

In Jordan, Deputy Prime Minister Ayman Majali echoed Lebanon's position on the planned withdrawal.

''We hope that the withdrawal from south Lebanon would be carried out within a process that would lead to a comprehensive peace in the region,'' Majali told The Associated Press. He was speaking outside the prime ministry building in the heart of Amman, where nearly 500 Lebanese residents lit candles and chanted national songs in a sit-in to denounce Israel's airstrikes on their country.

Turkey may be accepted into EU

ANKARA, Turkey - Europe's leaders accepted Turkey as a candidate for membership in the European Union and expect the nation's military to give up the powerful role it's played for 76 years as self-appointed guardian of the republic's internal order.

Negotiations over Turkey's terms of entry are expected to last for years and cover thousands of laws and regulations, on issues ranging from child labor to the size of bananas.

Of all the changes the EU is seeking, none would transform Turkey as deeply as the generals' submission to civilian control.

That prospect has energized Turkey's beleaguered advocates of democracy and human rights, who contend that the military must surrender its Big Brother role to the EU.

"There should be a revision of the entire security doctrine, the deployment and the structure of the armed forces of Turkey, whose territorial integrity can be placed under European guarantee," Cengiz Candar, a columnist persecuted in the past for challenging the military, wrote recently in the mass-circulation Istanbul newspaper Sabah.

Publicly, the generals say they support EU membership because it would fulfill the secular, Europe-oriented vision of Kemal Ataturk, the general who founded the army and the republic on the Ottoman Empire's ruins. More practically, they don't want to be excluded as Europe forms defense organizations independent of NATO.

But only in recent weeks have the generals begun a detailed study of how they might be affected by the EU imperative that aspiring member achieve "stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for minorities."

Signs of irritation and resistance have surfaced in comments by senior officers and in a memo distributed by the general staff to rank-and-file units just before the EU voted in December to make Turkey a candidate.

The memo focused on two membership conditions often spelled out by European leaders: that Turkey abolish its military-dominated National Security Council and subordinate the general staff to the civilian Defense Ministry.

"These efforts to change the administrative structure of Turkey," the memo said, "result either from an ignorance of history or, worse, a desire to unjustly attack and weaken the Turkish armed forces."