Lebanon talks on ousting president stalled-Jumblatt

WASHINGTON, Mar 6 (Reuters) Talks over firing Lebanon's pro-Syrian president are deadlocked because the sides disagree on disarming the Damascus-backed militant group Hizbollah, anti-Syrian movement leader Walid Jumblatt said today.

Jumblatt, a veteran Lebanese politician campaigning to have parliament vote President Emile Lahoud out of office, said he was lobbying the United States to press Syria harder into accepting the exit of what he called its ''puppet.'' The Druze leader, who was due later have his second meeting in two weeks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said his movement would hold mass anti-Syrian rallies if talks at a conference in Lebanon on the country's future made no headway.

Rival Muslim and Christian leaders, both pro- and anti-Syrian, are holding talks for up to a week in the largest such gathering since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

The anti-Syrian movement refused to accept a compromise which would have removed Lahoud but allowed Hizbollah to keep its arms for its Syrian-backed campaign to fight Israel, Jumblatt said.

''If the process of dialogue will stay in deadlock, we have to stick to the street,'' Jumblatt, speaking in English, told an audience at the Brookings Institution thinktank.

Following the assassination of an anti-Syrian former prime minister, Lebanese street protests and U.S.-led international pressure forced Syria last year to end its decades-old occupation of its smaller neighbor.

Rice, who last month visited Jumblatt and other leaders in Lebanon but snubbed Lahoud, has said the country should have a leader who looks to the future -- an indirect way of opposing the incumbent.

Jumblatt, who has criticized Rice in the past over the U.S.

invasion of Iraq, also said he wanted the Bush administration to help strengthen Lebanon's army so that it could be a viable alternative to Hizbollah, particularly in the country's south.

Lahoud says he will serve out his mandate which ends next year.

The extension of Lahoud's term in 2004, as demanded by Syria, plunged Lebanon into its worst political crisis since the end of the war and set Damascus on collision course with the international community.

REUTERS CH KP2309