Shortly before the Iraq war, the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Mikhail Wehbe, was addressing the press. Avoiding eye contact, he allowed an Israeli reporter to finish asking a question and then said, “Next question.”

“Ambassador, is it your policy to not answer questions from the Israeli press?” an American reporter asked. “This is not the case,” Mr. Wehbe shot back. Nevertheless, when the Israeli reporter’s question was repeated by an Arab correspondent, a respectful Mr. Wehbe answered in detail.

That awkward episode was typical of the way Mr. Wehbe, a Damascus party apparatchik, handled his two-year stint on the vaunted U.N. Security Council. “Inside, he acts the same way,” said a frustrated British diplomat. “He thinks this is a Baath meeting.”

The inability of its diplomats to adapt to a different political environment than the one they are used to in Damascus has put Syria, less than a year later, on a direct collision course with that same Security Council.

A September 2 council resolution called on all foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon. Over the weekend, Secretary-General Annan reported that Syria has not done so and that it declined to obey other provisions of the resolution. This week the council will convene again to discuss the report and tighten the pressure on Damascus.

Last month, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Fayssal Mekdad, who replaced Mr. Wehbe, told me the resolution was in fact directed at Israel. That argument was shot down by Mr. Annan, who noted in his Friday report that Israel’s complete withdrawal from Lebanon was certified by the U.N. in 2000.

Apart from the U.N. itself, “the only significant foreign forces deployed in Lebanon, as of 30 September 2004, are Syrian,” Mr. Annan wrote in the surprisingly unambiguous report.

He downplayed a Syrian cosmetic withdrawal of some 3,000 troops – out of a force Syria claims is 14,000 strong but others put at as high as 20,000 – saying that there was no evidence the redeployed soldiers went back to their barracks in Syria.

The Syrians were foolish enough to boast to Mr. Annan’s Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, of the prominent presence of their secret police in Lebanon – a fact that made its way into the report. Mr. Annan further wrote that many Lebanese believe Syria manipulates Lebanon’s politics, in defiance of the resolution’s demand for staying out of the nation’s political affairs.

Some of Mr. Annan’s close advisers, I am told, wanted to go easy on Damascus. One of them, Lakhdar Brahimi, advocated blaming Israel for creating the uncertainties that led to Syria’s presence in Lebanon.

It was Mr. Brahimi who, as an Arab League envoy, facilitated what is known as the Taif Accords, which in October 1989 established Syria’s troop presence for “a set period of no more than two years,” and which became the basis for Syria’s legal claim for its continuous occupation of Lebanon.

A ham-fisted maneuver last month that forced an extension of the term of Damascus-favorite President Lahoud, however, raised the ire of his nemesis, Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and started the ball rolling in a new direction. The wealthy Mr. Hariri is an ally of President Chirac of France, who forged a rare alliance with Washington to start a push for ending Lebanon’s occupation.

Syria was baffled. Before last month’s council vote, its diplomats did not even convene the powerful Arab group at the U.N., which could have swayed some council votes. After that, Mr. Hariri was repeatedly taken to Damascus, a fact that did not change French plans to increase the international pressure.

Syrian threats became even less subtle over the weekend, when a car bomb in Beirut almost killed Marwan Hamadeh, a Druze politician who had resigned to protest Syria’s dominance.

Beirut, which has been slowly inching back to its former glory as “Paris of the Middle East,” is being treated as Damascus’s piggybank – “Like Hong Kong for China,” a disgusted Lebanese friend told me recently.

Mr. Annan noted that Syria never established an embassy in Beirut. It has no plans to withdraw troops from Lebanon, he concluded. The thing is, Damascus’s Baathists consider Lebanon – as well as Israel, incidentally – a part of a greater Syria just as Saddam saw Kuwait as an Iraqi province.

So this week the Security Council will admonish and rebuke a nation that only last year it counted as a member.

Mr. Avni covers the United Nations for The New York Sun. He can be reached at bavni@nysun.com.