BEIRUT, Lebanon - A key anti-Syrian Lebanese leader, Walid Jumblatt, paid tribute Thursday to Ghazi Kanaan, Syria's late interior minister Ghazi Kanaan and former strongman in Lebanon whose suicide was announced in Damascus.

Kanaan, "who was part of the old guard close to former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad supported the Lebanese resistance to the Israeli occupation" and helped scrap a 1983 pact with Israel, the Druze chief told a news conference.

He said the former Syrian military intelligence head for Lebanon had also "supported our 1989 battle against the revolt by (Christian) General Michel Aoun that led to the (1989) Taef accord ending the Lebanese civil war".

In listing Kanaan's achievements in Lebanon, Jumblatt also pointed to the post-war disarmament of the militias apart from Hezbollah guerrillas fighting Israeli occupation in south Lebanon.

"And he was against the extension of the mandate of President (Emile) Lahoud (in September 2004) because he knew this would isolate Syria ... but he wasn't able to do anything," said Jumblatt.

The Druze chief said that Kanaan after 20 years in the post was sidelined from the Lebanese issue and "betrayed" by his successor as Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon, Rustom Ghazaleh, who took over in 2002.

After a deployment of 29 years, Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon last April, two months after the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri that was widely blamed on Damascus despite its repeated denials.

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