Starting Wednesday, six commercial ships will start removing up to 4,500 Canadians per day from Lebanon to Cyprus.

From Cyprus, leased aircraft will fly the evacuees to Canada, Foreign Affairs officials said Monday.

However, they acknowledge there is no plan in place to move Canadians from southern Lebanon, where the Israeli bombardment is heaviest, to Beirut.

Canadian officials say they are hoping to obtain assurances of safe passage from the various sides in the conflict zone. They are also talking with various non-governmental organizations about the most secure exit routes.

While up to 40,000 to 50,000 people with Canadian citizenship are believed to be in Lebanon, but most of those hold dual citizenship and might be living there permanently.

About 5,000 Canadians are thought to be visiting the country at this time. About 21,000 have registered with the Canadian embassy in Lebanon.

"We are doing our level best to facilitate a deployment for Canadians who wish to leave Lebanon," Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Monday on CTV.

"The important point is to secure those ships and the individual's passage. We want to make sure we get as much security as possible around this operation and that's why there will be further contact with both Lebanon and Israel."

Speaking from the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the timetable was moving at the same pace as British and American evacuation efforts.

The U.S. and Italy evacuated some high-priority cases on Sunday, as did Britain.

MacKay rejected criticisms, including from the Canadian-Lebanese cultural association, that his department was slow off the mark in organizing the evacuation of Canadians.

"Let me be very clear on this, plans have been in place for some time, we have been working on this from the beginning of this crisis," said MacKay.

"We have had a 1-800 (information) number operating the entire time, information has been going out on the website, we have people volunteering inside Lebanon. No country has reacted as quickly and effectively than Canada."

MacKay agreed it was a challenge getting information to all the Canadians in Lebanon. That was especially true for those who might be taking shelter from the bombings in basements and did not have access to phones or computers, he said.

Canadians in Lebanon are urged to register themselves by calling the following numbers:

• Operations Centre of Foreign Affairs: call collect at (613) 996-8885
• Canadian Embassy in Beirut: 961 (4) 713-900

About 21,000 Canadians have already registered with the Canadian embassy in Beirut.

U.S. evacuation plans

Meanwhile, a commercial ship escorted by a U.S. destroyer will start evacuating some Americans from war-torn Lebanon on Tuesday and more military helicopters will be used to fly others direct to Cyprus, a U.S. official said Monday.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman said the commercial ship, the Orient Queen, can carry up to 750 people. A U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Gonzalez, will escort it and the USS Iwo Jima may do so as well, Whitman said.

There are some 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, and the U.S. Embassy has already advised those who wish to leave that they should prepare a small bag and be ready for announcements on when to leave.

With files from The Canadian Press