The United States had conversations with France and the United Nations today on steps to strengthen Beirut's security control over Lebanon. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by telephone with her French counterpart Michel Barnier while the U.N. special envoy for Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen, met with officials in Washington on the issue, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. Roed-Larsen made the Washington stopover ahead of his discussions on the troop pullout with the Syrian and Lebanese governments. He is in charge of U.N. efforts to secure a withdrawal of the 14,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon. "The goal is to help the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people have a government that extends throughout the country, that can have political and security control of the country," Boucher told reporters. "We're going to try to keep talking and work out with other members of the international community the kind of things that we might do to support the extension of Lebanese government authority over the country," Boucher said. The discussions are taking place amid expectations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would unveil a new plan to withdraw his troops from Lebanon in an address to parliament Saturday. Calls for their departure have grown since the assassination last month of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
