Syria may cooperate in UN probe

DAMASCUS -- Facing the prospect of international sanctions, the Syrian government said yesterday that it might allow senior intelligence officials suspected in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri to be questioned abroad, and it promised to cooperate, within limits, with the investigation.

But the government mixed conciliation with hesitation and a litany of reservations, condemning the UN report as a political ploy and contending officials had fully cooperated with the UN inquiry.

Analysts in Damascus said yesterday's moves signaled what may emerge as the shape of Syrian policy in the decisive weeks ahead: offering enough gestures to fend off international pressure, but no concessions that might imperil a government feeling besieged.

At a news conference, Riyad Dawudi, a Foreign Ministry adviser, provided the first public response by the government, which was said to be caught off guard by the breadth of the UN inquiry.

It came amid grumblings in the Syrian capital over the lack of forceful leadership during a crisis that has become the biggest test of Bashar Assad's five-year reign as president.

''We'll cooperate but we'll wait to see the limits and elements of this cooperation," Dawudi said.

He signaled the government might be willing to send senior officials abroad for questioning in the investigation.

''If there's a necessity, we will see according to the circumstances that are going to be put before us," he said. ''If there is any demand coming from the commission, we will study, we will discuss with the commission and we might agree."

The report by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis stopped short of directly blaming Assad for the assassination, but it contended that the Feb. 14 killing of Hariri and 22 others could not have happened without the approval of top Syrian security officials and Lebanese intelligence counterparts.

The report names individuals from a cross section of the Syrian government -- civilian and military officials, politicians and intelligence figures, and officials from the Sunni Muslim majority and Assad's minority Alawite community.

The report said Syria's foreign minister lied in a letter to investigators -- a charge that Dawudi denied -- and cited one witness as implicating Assad's powerful brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, a member of the government's inner circle.

Dawudi questioned the credibility of one of the report's named witnesses and said other testimony amounted to hearsay.

He said the investigation relied on the accounts of Lebanese witnesses who were anti-Syrian, giving the report a political cast that will allow it be manipulated by Syria's foes, namely the United States and France.

''What is in the report are pure allegations," Dawudi said. ''Everything is based on a presumption that the very presence of the Syrian security apparatus and military forces in Lebanon and the impact Syria had in Lebanon at that time implies -- and this is an induction done in the report -- that this assassination plot could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services. And this is just an allegation."

The United States and France are expected to put resolutions critical of Syria before the UN Security Council, which will meet Tuesday to discuss the Mehlis report.

In a statement broadcast yesterday, Hariri's son, Saad, who heads the largest anti-Syrian bloc in Lebanon's Parliament, repeated his faction's call for an international tribunal to try suspects in his father's killing.

''Reaching justice presents the Arab and international community with additional responsibilities that prompt us to urge them to continue all aspects of the investigation in the crime and refer it to an international court," he said from his home in Saudi Arabia in his first public reaction to the Mehlis's report. ''We do not seek revenge. We seek justice."

The Syrian government had reportedly expected a more favorable portrayal in Mehlis's inquiry because it allowed its officials to be interviewed.

''They were shocked, they were totally shocked by the content of the report," said Ibrahim Hamidi, journalist in Damascus for the leading pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat. ''They expected Mehlis to at least mention they were cooperating. Of course, they did not expect him to go this high, to leak all these names."

Analysts in Damascus said the leadership appears divided between two factions -- one urging more cooperation, sensing the depth of the crisis, and the other believing that the government can weather the turmoil and that any degree of cooperation probably will only bring more demands.

Some in the Syrian capital have been struck by the government's response so far. Assad has yet to comment on the report, perhaps out of fear of encouraging an atmosphere of crisis.