However, Damascus said it would be sending its deputy foreign minister rather than the country's top diplomat, an indication that Damascus is not entirely satisfied with the agenda. Syria had pegged its participation on condition that the question of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in June 1967 would figure on the agenda. This is probably one of the reasons that no official agenda has been established yet, with about 24 hours to go before the conference convenes.
And it's probably no coincidence either that the election of the Lebanese president, who's deadline expired midnight Friday, Nov. 23, has been postponed for the fifth time. This latest postponement gives the Syrians an extra card to play at Annapolis.
Upon leaving the presidential palace just before midnight – and with no consensus reached by the country's parliamentarians on who they could elect to be the next president –- Lahoud handed the task of maintaining Lebanon's security to the army.
The delay in Beirut serves the interests of Syria more so than anyone else in the region. It gives Damascus an additional bargaining point at Annapolis, something Syria's President Bashar Assad badly needs.
The Syrians realize they hold no aces other than the Lebanon card.
The danger is that plans can go astray and that Washington may not see the situation through the same lens as Damascus. The "temporary measure," decreed in Lebanon may end up lasting longer than originally anticipated. This sort of thing tends to happen in Lebanon. As was so adequately pointed out by Paul Khalife, a correspondent for Radio France International, the morning after President Emile Lahoud left the presidential palace in his dispatch: In 1948 the Lebanese were told that the thousands of Palestinian refugees flooding into Lebanon was "temporary." Sixty years later their numbers swelled to 400,000 and they make up 12 percent of Lebanon's population.
In 1990, at the end of the 15-year Lebanese civil war, tens of thousands of refugees were told they could return within a short while to their villages in southern Lebanon; it took 18 years to make that a reality.
The Saudi-sponsored Taif Accords in 1990, which put an end to the civil war, included a clause calling for the immediate withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. That took 13 years to materialize. The Lebanese presidential election which has been postponed five consecutive times was to take place at the latest Saturday, Nov. 24. This date, too, has been postponed by another week.
As the French radio correspondent pointed out, "the Lebanese have come to realize that in Lebanon only the temporary is permanent."
The one hope for a quick resolution of the Lebanese crisis is the inclusion of the Golan question on the agenda at Annapolis. The road to peace in Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Beirut needs to detour via the Golan.