UN to ask more of Syria in slay probe
UNITED NATIONS -- The head of a UN probe into the murder of Rafik al-Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, said yesterday he was preparing to make new demands of Syria and it would take weeks to learn whether Damascus will keep its promise of full cooperation.
''Our expectations vis-a-vis the Syrian authorities are high in this respect. The commission has already prepared several new requests for cooperation to the Syrian Foreign Ministry," Serge Brammertz of Belgium told the UN Security Council.
''The coming weeks will prove whether our requirements will be justified and our cautious optimism was justified."
Vice Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad of Syria, addressing the council after Brammertz, said Damascus had offered its full cooperation in the belief that finding the truth was ''part and parcel of our interests."
UN investigators, in their third progress report to the council, which ordered the investigation, said this week they were closer to a detailed understanding of how the 2005 plot was carried out and predicted success in getting to the bottom of the crime, in part because of better cooperation from Syria.
The report also said President Bashar al-Assad and Vice President Farouq al-Shara of Syria had agreed for the first time to interviews, which would take place in April.
Assad, in an interview on Sky News television, confirmed yesterday that he and Shara had agreed to meet with investigators, but ''not for interrogation."
''In the meeting they can ask about anything, and we expect them to ask about the political background of the problem or the relations between Syria and Lebanon and all these things," Assad said.
Assad initially refused to be questioned, and an earlier report accused Shara, then Syria's foreign minister, of providing investigators with false information in a letter.
UN investigators have previously accused Syria of providing false and misleading information, limiting their access to Syrian witnesses, and restricting their ability to freely question them once access was gained.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called Assad yesterday to encourage him to fully cooperate ''so we can all get to the truth and complete the investigation as soon as possible," chief UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Reuters.
Hariri was a strong critic of Syria's decades-long domination of Lebanon, and many Lebanese suspect Syrian involvement in his killing, which Damascus denies.
An earlier UN report concluded Hariri could not have been assassinated without the approval of top Syrian security officials and their Lebanese counterparts.
The new report on the death of Hariri and 22 others in a Feb. 14, 2005, bombing in Beirut was the first since Brammertz took over the probe in January from Detlev Mehlis of Germany.
Mekdad yesterday criticized some of the investigative work performed under Mehlis, saying it was clear a number of witnesses had made false allegations aimed at damaging Syria.
US Ambassador John Bolton, speaking to reporters Wednesday after private talks with Brammertz, said the question of Syrian cooperation ''remains to be seen."
''Performance is what we are looking for -- the end of its obstructionist behavior," he said. ''We'll see what happens."
