UNITED NATIONS – Secretary-General Annan said yesterday that he was “encouraged” by the outcome of a meeting between his special envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, and the president of Syria, Bashar Assad. Meanwhile, Washington expressed concern over Syrian interference in Lebanon, as Syrian officials accused the Bush administration of looking for a “pretext” to attack.

Mr. Roed-Larsen briefed Mr. Annan yesterday in Paris about his two-hour-long meeting held Sunday with Mr. Assad. Mr. Annan “was encouraged by Mr. Roed-Larsen’s report,” a U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said yesterday. The “discussions with the Syrian president were constructive and helpful.”

The U.N. envoy’s trip to Damascus was announced last week. U.N. officials, as well as officials from America and France, who lead the Security Council on the issue of Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, have declined to comment about the circumstances that triggered the visit. Yesterday, they refused to disclose any details of the Damascus meeting beyond the official announcement.

Mr. Annan has congratulated Mr. Assad’s regime for taking measures to implement a Security Council resolution that called on Syria to leave Lebanon. But the Bush administration insists that Damascus has not yet complied with that requirement, known as Security Council Resolution 1559.

Mr. Eckhard said yesterday that a three-man U.N. team, which is returning to Beirut for a second verification mission on the Syrian presence there, was dispatched to investigate reports that “there could be security elements from Syria still in Lebanon.” He declined to specify the exact date the team is expected to arrive in Lebanon.

Last month, the team reported that most uniformed Syrian troops had left but that there was no way to verify whether Syrian intelligence operatives remained. Mr. Annan congratulated Syria at the time and compared its withdrawal to Israel’s complete retreat from Lebanon in 2000, which was also verified by the United Nations.

Washington, however, insists that Syria needed to completely end its presence and stop interfering in its neighbor’s affairs.

“I think our concerns are based on fact,” a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said yesterday. On Friday, the White House said it was disturbed to hear reports that Syria has drawn a “hit list” of Lebanese opposition figures targeted for assassination.

“We are not that stupid. We understand what are the ulterior motives of this administration,” the Syrian ambassador in Washington, Imad Moustapha, told Reuters yesterday, denying that any Syrian presence was left in Lebanon.” We’re not going to give them a pretext on a plate of silver and say, ‘We will do everything possible to provoke you into attacking Syria.’ “

On Sunday, a pro-Syrian Maronite Christian and a former army chief of staff, Michel Aoun, scored an election victory in a district east of the capital, Beirut. The victory dealt a blow to the aspirations of an anti-Syrian coalition led by the businessman Saad Hariri – son of the slain prime minister Rafik Hariri – and a Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt.