U.N. Investigators Boost Pressure on Syria

Mon Jan 2, 2:51 PM ET

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A U.N. commission said Monday it had asked a second time to question Syria's president about the assassination of a former Lebanese leader, turning up the pressure on Damascus after a former top government official said President Bashar Assad had issued a threat before the killing.

The commission's spokeswoman, Nasra Hassan, said it also wants to interview former Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam "as soon as possible." Khaddam, a one-time stalwart of Syria's ruling party, said in a television interview last week that Assad had threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri several months before Hariri's Feb. 14 truck-bomb assassination in Beirut.

The allegations that Assad said he would "crush whoever attempts to overturn our decision" to keep a pro-Syrian leader in Lebanon further deepened suspicions of Syrian involvement in the murder.

The U.N. commission asked to interview Assad in July but was refused. Hassan said it is "waiting for a response from the Syrians." The Syrian government did not comment.

Syrian legislator Faysal Kalthoum said Damascus would reject the U.N. committee's request to interview Assad if it violates the dignity of the presidency.

"This request must not contradict the constitutional and legal rules surrounding the dignity of the presidency, the symbol of sovereignty and national dignity," he told The Associated Press. If it does, it will be rejected by all Syrians, he said.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, urged Syria to comply.

"We strongly support the commission's investigative efforts," Bolton said in a statement. "We expect the government of Syria to comply with these requests fully and unconditionally as the Security Council resolutions require."

In the interview from Paris, where he is writing his memoirs, Khaddam became the first former senior member of the Syrian government to confirm allegations that Assad had threatened Hariri.

Hariri had been trying to block Syrian plans to extend the term of Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud.

The U.N. commission, whose mandate was recently renewed for six months by the U.N. Security Council, has reported Hariri told several witnesses after meeting Assad that the Syrian leader had threatened him for opposing a longer term.

Syrian officials have denied the threat was made, and that they were involved in Hariri's killing.

Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa promised last week that Syria would cooperate fully with the commission, but Damascus has made such pledges in the past without fully living up to them. Last month the Security Council said Syria had not fully cooperated with the investigation.

In two interim reports published last year, the commission accused top Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials of involvement in Hariri's killing. The outgoing commission chairman, Detlev Mehlis, told reporters he was confident that Syrian "authorities" were behind the assassination.

Khaddam, a Syrian vice president from 1984 to June 2005, was Syria's point man in Lebanon for many years until 1998. A friend of Hariri, he was the only Syrian official to attend his funeral.

In the TV interview, he claimed Assad told Hariri: "You want to bring a (new) president in Lebanon. ... I will not allow that. I will crush whoever attempts to overturn our decision."

Assad wanted Lebanese legislators to extend Lahoud's term by three years. Hariri had opposed the change, but in September 2004 he voted for it.

Hariri's assassination provoked mass demonstrations against Syria that helped force Damascus to withdraw its troops, ending a 29-year military presence in Lebanon.

Hassan said Khaddam's remarks in the TV interview "corroborated the information we had from other sources and which were contained in the commission's two reports."

The allegation provoked an outcry in Damascus. The Syrian parliament, virtually a one-party legislature, said that Khaddam should stand trial for high treason, and the ruling Baath Party stripped him of membership.

The Al-Baath newspaper of the ruling party said in an editorial Monday that Khaddam's remarks to Al-Arabiya television were "fabrications and illusions" and "a dagger in the back of the country."

In Lebanon, Hariri's son, Saad, issued a statement extolling Khaddam for delivering what he called "a historic testimony in the interests of Lebanon and the truth" about Hariri's killing. Saad is a leader of the anti-Syrian majority in Lebanon's parliament.

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