France urged Syria today to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon, support the "road map" for Middle East peace and pressure radical Arab groups to end their campaigns of violence.
Foreign Minister Mr Dominique de Villepin also called on Israel to apply the peace plan fully and asked the Palestinians to renounce violence and end suicide bombings such as one yesterday that killed four people, including a French woman.
The appointment of a new Palestinian government under Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas offered a new opportunity for peace in the region and France was ready to host an international conference to help foster it, Mr Villepin told a news conference.
"We must seize this unique chance," he said in what appeared to be the clearest French statement to date of the need to end Syria's troop presence in Lebanon, a country Paris administered under a League of Nations mandate between the two world wars.
"Lebanon needs to return quickly...to full independence and sovereignty. The condition for this is the withdrawal of all foreign troops and the deployment of Lebanese forces on the border with Israel," Mr Villepin said.
"Syria can make a gesture and continue the withdrawal already undertaken," he said, referring to the pullout in February of about 4,000 troops from northern Lebanon, the latest in a series of redeployments and withdrawals that reduced the number of Syrian troops in Lebanon to 16,000-17,000.