Slaying of former Lebanese leader puts Syria in spotlight
DAMASCUS -- It is unclear who engineered the attack that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and at least nine others, but his death has pitched Syria into deeper isolation and vulnerability.
Suspicion for the explosion has landed squarely on Syria, an embattled nation that's now poised to pay a diplomatic and political price for the billionaire construction magnate's death.
Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, denied involvement yesterday in an interview on CNN. "Syria has nothing to benefit from what has happened," he said.
But the assassination is expected to harden international resolve to force Syrian troops out of Lebanon and also to strip Syria of support from sometime defenders including France and Jordan. Damascus has for months ignored a United Nations Security Council mandate to withdraw its forces from neighboring Lebanon.
Defiant Syrian officials have contended that smaller, weaker Lebanon, whose current president is staunchly allied with Syria, depends on Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents to keep the peace among various Lebanese factions.
The bombing shattered the logic of that argument. With or without Syrian involvement, somebody managed to kill one of the nation's most celebrated politicians with some 300 kilograms of explosives in broad daylight in the bustling city center.
"Yesterday's bombing calls into question the stated reason behind this presence of Syrian security forces: Lebanon's internal security," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a news conference in Washington announcing the recall of the ambassador to Syria, Margaret Scobey. "The Lebanese people must be free to express their political preferences and choose their own representatives without intimidation and the threat of violence."
The decision to recall Scobey appeared to be part of a broader Bush administration strategy to ratchet up pressure on Damascus to engage more seriously on issues including the supply of arms and fighters to the insurgency in Iraq and to militant groups working to undermine the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The administration has also labeled the presence of 16,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon as a source of instability and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the relationship between the United States and Syria was "worsening."
"The withdrawal of the ambassador . . . relates to, unfortunately, the fact that the relationship has been for some time not moving in a positive direction; but this event in Lebanon, of course, is the proximate cause of the withdrawal," Rice said in Washington after meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister.
"We're not laying blame," Rice said of Hariri's slaying. "It needs to be investigated. That's the important point. However . . . Syria is in interference in the affairs of Lebanon. There are Syrian forces in Lebanon. Syria operates out of Lebanon."
A relative moderate, Hariri quit as prime minister in October in protest of Syrian tampering in Lebanon's affairs. At the time, Syria had pressured Lebanese lawmakers to amend the constitution so that Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a longtime Hariri rival and Syrian ally, could stay in office beyond his term limits.
"I charge the Lebanese-Syrian police regime with responsibility for Hariri's death," said Lebanese Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt. Some observers, however, questioned the likelihood of Syrian complicity. They said that Hariri had many possible business and political enemies and that Syria had too much to lose by participating in an assassination.
"It's too big for them," said Waleed Kazziha, a Lebanese political scientist at the American University in Cairo. "The last thing they want to do now is involve themselves in an assassination plot. It would be an escalation they are desperately trying to avoid."
