'Pullout won't solve Lebanon's problem'

"The issue goes much deeper than a Syrian troop pullout from Lebanon, as the coming days will show," the government's mouthpiece daily Tishrin said in an editorial headlined: "Why all the fuss?"

"One can already say that one of the aims of this hullabaloo is to harm relations between Syria and Lebanon ... They want to see the two countries estranged from each other... in a 'Greater Middle East' subjected to Israel."

The last was an allusion to a US move to push Western-style democratic reforms in the region, that was originally dubbed the Greater Middle East Initiative.

"They want to settle the Palestinian problem according to their own wishes and not according to international law, and in particular to deny Palestinian refugees their right of return (to homes in what is now Israel)", Tishrin said.