Report: Syria rejects EU border presence
Official Syrian news agency SANA denies Italian prime minister's statement that Assad accepted proposal to have European troops control passage of weapons between Syria, Lebanon
Syria said on Saturday it did not accept the deployment of European guards on the Lebanese side of the two countries' border to help prevent alleged arms shipments to Hizbullah.
The official news agency SANA said "there is no truth to news reports of Syria's acceptance of European border guards to monitor the border from Lebanon."
Earlier, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said Syrian President Bashar Assad had agreed to allow European troops to enforce an embargo along the border between his country and Lebanon,
"The Syrian president has welcomed my proposal to send border guards from the European Union to control the passage of weapons between Syria and Lebanon," Prodi said in the southern Italian city of Bari.
These border guards "will not be armed and will not be in uniform but will have all the necessary equipment to control the passage of weapons toward southern Lebanon," said Prodi, who had spoken with the Syrian president by telephone several times "in the last few days".
The guards would number "several hundred", according to Prodi.
The prime minister said he had informed the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan of the plan.
"Our main European partners have received this proposal with great interest," he said, adding that he hoped the matter would be taken up by EU foreign ministers when they meet in Brussels next week.
Italy has already deployed armed forces in southern Lebanon, joining a bolstered multinational UN force currently commanded by France.
The force polices a truce which ended a month of Israeli military strikes against Hizbullah gunmen in the country and rocket attacks by the Shiite group against Israel.
Syria, a staunch backer of Hizbullah, has been accused along with Iran of supplying weapons to the Shiite group, and its cooperation is deemed essential in ensuring a lasting truce in Lebanon.
Prodi said Assad had also agreed to send 500 extra Syrian guards to police Syria's side of the Lebanese border and that Damascus was showing a strong readiness to cooperate with the international community.
