UNITED NATIONS – Facing mounting pressure from Arab governments and the West, Syria yesterday indicated it would deal with a representative of U.N. Secretary-General Annan in what was seen as a refusal to relinquish its occupation of Lebanon.

Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Waleed Mualem, told reporters that President Assad’s regime would cooperate with Mr. Annan’s envoy for implementing Security Council Resolution 1559, Terje Roed-Larsen. The resolution demands that all foreigners end their military and political interference in Lebanon.

“Syria expresses its keen interest in cooperating with the envoy of the secretary-general of the United Nations to accomplish his mission in the best formula possible,” Mr. Mualem said, reading from a prepared text.

A U.N. forensic team headed by an Irish representative, Peter Fitzgerald, arrived in Beirut yesterday to begin an investigation into the February 14 assassination of multibillionaire opposition leader Rafik Hariri. A U.N. official told The New York Sun that Mr. Roed-Larsen, who last visited Lebanon and Syria on the eve of the assassination, does not intend to return until the forensic team’s work is done.

Mr. Annan yesterday told Al-Arabiya satellite TV that if Syria does not comply with Resolution 1559, the Security Council “may wish to take additional measures.” Asked if he supports such measures, Mr. Annan hedged, saying he would leave the decision to the council.

Mr. Mualem announced Syria’s readiness to begin redeploying some of the 14,000 troops it claims to have in Lebanon eastward, but not back to Syria in accordance with the Taif agreement. That agreement, negotiated by the Arab League in 1989, called on Syrian forces to begin a phased withdrawal within two years.

Opposition leaders in Lebanon and abroad scoffed at the suggestion. “This is the sixth time they redeploy,” the Washington-based president of the Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry, told the Sun. “Traditional diplomacy has failed. We need to take a stronger position against the Baathists.”

On Sunday, a large demonstration is planned in front of Syria’s U.N. mission here. A Druze leader who has emerged since the Hariri assassination as the strongest anti-Syrian voice inside Lebanon, Walid Jumballat, also rejected the ploy. “This is a new farce solely to appease Lebanese opinion,” he told Radio France Internationale. “It won’t work. These are men of the shadows, assassins.”

Outside pressure also increased as President Bush stressed in Europe that Syria needs to comply fully and immediately with Resolution 1559. “This needs to happen immediately,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said yesterday. That message, he added, will be made in Beirut next week by State Department envoy David Satterfield.

The pan-Arabic daily al-Hayat yesterday reported on a new Saudi-Egyptian-Algerian initiative to lean on Syria to implement Resolution 1559 and the Taif agreement. President Mubarak said he would dispatch his intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, to Damascus.

“With all this international pressure, Syria will soon be out of Lebanon,” a senior Arab U.N. envoy told the Sun, requesting anonymity. “The question is, do they already know it in Damascus.” Arab envoys rarely criticize each other at the U.N.

“The Saudis and the Egyptians want to pre-empt the deterioration of relations between Syria and the West,” added a former U.N. ambassador from Israel, Dore Gold. With growing pressures from abroad, he said, “the Syrians believe that only the U.N. secretariat can provide a protective umbrella for them.”