More Syrian troops pulled out of Lebanon yesterday as pro-Syrian Prime Minister Omar Karami prepared to abandon his bid to form a national unity government. Two dozen Syrian military trucks drove eastwards across the border overnight, while intelligence men burned papers at several Syrian offices in the Bekaa Valley, witnesses said.

Karami was due to meet President Emile Lahoud to inform him of his decision to resign. Karami said on Tuesday he would quit because he had failed to persuade the anti-Syrian opposition to join a unity cabinet to lead Lebanon to elections due in May.

The Sunni Muslim politician first resigned as Prime minister a month ago after coming under immense popular pressure from Lebanese angered by the killing of his predecessor Rafik al-Hariri. But parliament reappointed him 10 days later.

The opposition, which blames Hariri?s death on Syria and the Lebanese security agencies it backs, has refused to join any government until after elections that it expects will give it a majority in a parliament now largely allied to Damascus.

If he accepts Karami?s resignation, Lahoud will have to consult deputies again to choose a new prime minister, a process that could delay the election and anger the opposition, which accuses Karami of procrastinating to avoid the polls.

?I am afraid the delay was in fact to delay the elections because since the beginning, the government was trying to delay the elections,? Christian former President Amin Gemayel told Reuters. ?We are pushing to have the elections on schedule.? Opposition leaders had urged Karami to form a government without them. His old cabinet remains in a caretaker capacity.

<B>Political crisis</B>

Hariri?s killing in a Feb. 14 bombing prompted the biggest street protests seen in Lebanon, plunging the country into its gravest political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. A UN fact-finding report released last week criticised the shortcomings of Lebanon?s pro-Syrian authorities in preventing and investigating the attack. It recommended an international inquiry into Hariri?s killing, which the authorities accepted, but said such an investigation could not be carried out satisfactorily while Lebanon?s security chiefs remained in power.

Since then, military intelligence chief General Raymond Azar has taken a month?s leave. Christian, Druze and Sunni opposition leaders, many of them wartime foes, seized on popular anger at Hariri?s death to demand Syria withdraw forces it first sent to Lebanon in 1976.

Under fierce international pressure, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has promised to withdraw all troops, intelligence agents and equipment. Syria now says it will complete the withdrawal before the elections. Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara made the pledge in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, dated Tuesday.

Syria?s UN ambassador said a Syrian-Lebanese committee would meet this week to set a timetable for remaining troops to leave. The meeting would take place before the expected arrival in the region of Annan?s envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen. Syria submitted the letter as the Security Council discussed a resolution drafted by the United States and France that would authorise an international investigation into Hariri?s killing.

Damascus has completed the first stage of a two-phase withdrawal plan, pulling back to the Bekaa valley and withdrawing nearly half the 14,000 troops it kept in Lebanon. More than 2,000 Syrian troops have left in the past week, inching Syria closer to ending its 29-year military domination.

<B>Alistair LYON</B>