UN says Syria threatened slain Lebanese ex-leader

UNITED NATIONS -- President Bashar Assad of Syria threatened former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri with ''physical harm" last summer if Hariri challenged Assad's dominance over Lebanese political life, contributing to a climate of violence that led to the Feb. 14 slayings of Hariri and 19 others, according to testimony in a report released yesterday by a UN fact-finding team.

The report, which calls for an international investigation into Hariri's slaying, describes an August meeting in Damascus at which Assad ordered the Lebanese billionaire to support amending the Lebanon Constitution, according to testimony from ''various" sources who discussed the meeting with Hariri. The amendment, approved Sept. 3, allowed Emile Lahoud, the Syrian-backed Lebanese president, to remain in office for three more years.

Assad said that ''Lahoud should be viewed as his personal representative" in Lebanon and that ''opposing him is tantamount to opposing Assad himself," the report states. Assad then warned that he ''would rather break Lebanon over the heads of" Hariri and influential Druze political leader Walid Jumblatt ''than see his word in Lebanon broken."

The UN team, which was headed by Ireland's deputy police commissioner, Peter FitzGerald, alleged that Syrian-controlled Lebanese authorities exhibited a ''distinct lack of commitment" to conducting a credible investigation into Hariri's assassination by tampering with evidence and failing to pursue promising leads.

FitzGerald stopped short of accusing Syria and its Lebanese allies of detonating the bomb that killed Assad's major political rival in Lebanon. But he contended that Syria ''bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded" Hariri's assassination.

In the report, FitzGerald said the international investigative team ''would need executive authority to carry out its interrogations, searches, and other relevant tasks." But he added that it was ''more than doubtful" that an international investigation into the crime could succeed as long as the current leadership in Lebanon's Syrian-backed security establishment remains in power.

The 20-page report, presented to the UN Security Council this afternoon by Secretary General Kofi Annan, represents the most damning official account of Syria's role in Lebanon.

Syria's UN envoy, Fayssal Mekdad, questioned the need for an international investigation into the killing, saying Lebanese officials were capable of doing the job. Mekdad also denied that Assad and other Syrian authorities had played any role in Hariri's death. ''I assure you we don't deal this way," Mekdad said.

FitzGerald said that a ''single individual or small terrorist group" lacked the capacity to carry out such a sophisticated attack, which required ''considerable finance, military precision in its execution, [and] substantial logistical support."