The inability of a UN team to categorically confirm the withdrawal of all Syrian intelligence operative from Lebanon comes as no surprise, leading analyst Lt.-Col. (res.) Moshe Marzouk told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Marzouk, formerly head of the Lebanon desk in army intelligence, stressed that there had been reliable reports from Lebanon that Syria's security and intelligence apparatus was still very much in place.

The UN team sent to Lebanon to verify the withdrawal of all Syrian forces in accordance with Security Council resolution 1559 issued its report late on Monday night.

The report said the team had confirmed the withdrawal of all Syrian military personnel except near Deir al-Ashayar along the Syria-Lebanon border, where a Syrian battalion was still deployed. The report noted there was no defined demarcation of the frontier in the area and it was unclear whether it was Syrian or Lebanese territory.

According to the verification team, however, it was not certain if all of Syria's intelligence network, including officers and agents, had actually pulled out of the country.

The report said all the locations formerly used by Syria's intelligence apparatus were empty but that "the team has been unable to conclude with certainty that all the intelligence apparatus has been withdrawn," especially as such matters were often clandestine.

Marzouk, now a senior researcher at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center's Institute for Counterterrorism, said that according to reports from Lebanon at the time of the military pullout, Syrian intelligence agents had simply rented places in other parts of Lebanon.

"In any event, Syria is deeply entrenched in Lebanon and no longer really needed its military there to maintain its influence over the country and its leadership," said Marzouk. "This influence will not change even after the parliamentary elections, especially in light of the inability of the opposition parties to forge a united list."

Marzouk was referring to the announcement by former Lebanese Army commander Gen. Michel Aoun, who recently returned to Lebanon after 15 years' exile in France, that he would head an independent list after failing to reach an agreement with Druse leader Walid Jumblatt.

In the interim, The New York Times reported that Syria had severed military and intelligence cooperation with the US.

The newspaper quoted Syria's ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha, as saying that ties with the Central Intelligence Agency and the military had been cut in the past few days because of what he described as unjust American allegations.

The US has been pressing Syria to prevent terrorists from crossing into Iraq and to also help halt the flow of arms and money to insurgents.

The flow, however, has continued unabated, despite what Moustapha described as additional security measures and beefed-up patrols along the border.

Moustapha was quoted as saying that it appeared the US administration had "decided to escalate the situation with Syria," despite the measures it had taken along the Iraqi border and the withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon.

Syria had ostensibly cooperated with the US primarily on intelligence transfer levels in the war on global terrorism following the September 11 terror attacks.

The Times report, however, said this level of cooperation had dwindled even before the official announcement over the severance.

Marzouk said the Syrian move was also no surprise in light of the fact that Syrian still positioned itself in the eyes of the Arab world as the anti-American and anti-Western flag bearer.

He stressed that Damascus viewed the insurgency in Iraq as being in its interest and that of its ally, Iran. The Syrian regime also believed that as long as the US was bogged down there it would not take any overtly aggressive action against Syria.

"This is typical Syrian policy – to fight a war against Israel, for instance, by using proxies in Lebanon so that Syria has no apparent hand in the matter and, therefore, will not have to pay any price," said Marzouk. "The same kind of thing is happening now in Iraq with Syria allowing members of the former Ba'ath regime who took refuge in Syria to send money and arms to insurgents and turning a blind eye to terrorists going there to fight."

Some of those terrorists have been caught and have stated quite clearly that they received their training in camps in Syria, he continued.

"It was also no coincidence that shortly after the Syrian ambassador announced the cutting of intelligence and military cooperation with the US, members of the Syrian security arrested two local human rights activists and closed a club that had been used by supporters of human rights," said Marzouk.