Lebanese President Michel Suleiman returned to Beirut on Thursday armed with what has been described as a successful start to a new kind of relationship with neighboring Syria, after decades of unclear ties that entailed Syrian domination and more than three years of high tension.

During the first visit by a Lebanese president since 2005, Suleiman and Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed on normalizing their ties, starting with the unprecedented move of opening embassies in each other's capitals – a highly political symbolic move indicating Syrian recognition of Lebanon as a sovereign state.

This will be the first time since their independence from French colonial rule in the 1940s that the two countries will have official diplomatic representation, a repeated demand by the pro-Western Lebanese parliamentary majority that believes Syria wants to maintain its control in their country.

After almost 30 years in Lebanon, Syria withdrew its troops from the country in April 2005 after massive domestic and international pressure following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February of the same year.

The pro-Western forces blamed Damascus for the murder and for a wave of subsequent assassinations that mostly targeted anti-Syrian politicians and public figures. Syria has always denied its involvement in such acts or in interfering in Lebanese politics since its withdrawal.

The anti-Syrian forces, however, distrust Syria's intentions and suspect that Damascus will not recognize their country as a separate state due to the historic legacy and Arab nationalist ideology of Syria's ruling Baath regime, which took power in 1963. Plus, their borders have not been fully demarcated on the ground.

Washington welcomed, albeit cautiously, the Lebanese-Syrian decision to open embassies.

"If the Syrians will go ahead and demarcate their border between Lebanon and Syria, and respect [Lebanon's] sovereignty in other ways, then this will have proved to be a very good step," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.

On Thursday, it was announced in Damascus that Suleiman and Assad had also agreed to take formal steps to begin defining and drawing their frontiers, according to a joint statement read in a joint news conference held by the foreign ministers of the two countries.

Yet, there is a major glitch, the disputed land of the Shebaa Farms, to overcome before an actual agreement can be reached on the borders.

"It is not possible to mark the borders in the Shebaa Farms as long as there is still Israeli occupation. The occupation must end," was Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem's response to a question on whether the delineation would include the Israeli-occupied piece of land.

Shebaa, a 25-square-kilometer land rich in water resources, lies at the junction of southeast Lebanon, southwest of Syria and northern Israel, which captured the farm land in 1967 and considers it part of the Syrian Golan Heights.

Damascus and Beirut claim it is Lebanese territory, contradicting a U.N. declaration that Israel had completed its withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000.

Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah organization, backed by Syria and Iran, cites the occupation of Shebaa as the main reason for keeping its anti-Israeli arsenal – a fundamental issue of dispute between Lebanese political rivals who almost pushed their country into another civil war during an 18-month crisis between the pro- and anti-Western camps.

During Suleiman's two-day visit, the two leaders also promised to investigate the fate of hundreds of people missing in both countries since the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war. Human rights groups say that some 650 people who disappeared during the war are being held in Syria.

The joint statement said the neighbors also decided to work together to control their borders and combat trafficking and "all operations that breach the law." But there was no mention of weapons allegedly being smuggled from Syria to Hezbollah.

They additionally agreed to re-evaluate longstanding bilateral agreements and to boost commercial trade.

Analysts say the fact that there was no reference to defining a time limit to achieving these ambitious goals toward normalization means it might be a difficult and lengthy process – at least until there is an official diplomatic representation in Damascus and Beirut.

Nevertheless, the first crucial step has been taken in breaking the ice and declaring the intentions.