UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen is scheduled to arrive in Damascus later Saturday to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a timetable of complete withdrawal from neighboring Lebanon.

Information ministry sources told Xinhua that Roed-Larsen would attend a joint press conference Sunday with after Syrian Foreign Minister Faruk al-Shareh talks with him.

Larsen would first hold talks with Egyptian and Jordanian officials on Saturday before flying to Damascus, according to a UN spokesman in Beirut.

After his visit to Syria, the envoy would head to Beirut for talks with senior Lebanese officials on Monday, the spokesman said.

Syria has carried out the first stage of a two-phase withdrawal, with nearly half of its 14,000 troops pulling out of Lebanon and the rest pulling back to the eastern Bekaa valley.

A Syrian-Lebanese military committee is scheduled to meet on April 7 to work out a final withdrawal plan.

During an Arab summit in Algeria late last month, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he has secured a Syrian pledge to completely withdraw from Lebanon before the country's parliamentary elections in May.

Source: Xinhua