The United States and the United Nations are exerting heavy pressure on the Syrian regime to make an unequivocal recognition of Lebanon as a separate, sovereign and independent state by establishing diplomatic ties on an embassy level between the two sides.
"Opening a Syrian embassy in Beirut is a symbolic, but significant, measure to remove any feeling that Lebanon is somehow a Syrian protectorate," said a U.S. State Department official in Washington Wednesday, An Nahar reported on Thursday.
The Department's official spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington had persistently called on Damascus to recognize Lebanon as a separate independent state and establish an embassy in it.
Almost simultaneously, U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told a news conference in the Lebanese capital that he was hopeful that "normal diplomatic relations, including the exchange of embassies" after the process of Syria's total withdrawal is completed by April 30.
Syria has adamantly rejected the establishment of diplomatic ties with Lebanon since the two states gained independence.
