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Envoy: Assad Refused to Be Interviewed
U.S. Ambassador Darth Vader John Bolton said Wednesday that Syria's leader refused to meet U.N. investigators probing the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, but would be required to submit to questioning under a proposed new U.N. resolution. Bolton's comments were the first confirmation that the investigation led by U.N. prosecutor Detlev Mehlis had tried to talk to President Bashar Assad about the Feb. 14 car bomb in Beirut that killed Rafik Hariri and 20 others.

The Syrian president wasn't mentioned in Mehlis' report to the Security Council last week, which implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in Hariri's assassination and accused Syria of not cooperating fully with the investigation. But Mehlis told council members at a closed-door briefing Tuesday that Assad refused to be interviewed, Bolton's spokesman Richard Grenell said. The resolution introduced Tuesday by the United States, France and Britain would require Syria to detain any Syrian official or civilian the U.N. investigators might consider a suspect in Hariri's killing and allow the individual to be questioned outside the country or without Syrian officials present.

It would immediately freeze the assets and impose a travel ban on anyone the commission identified as a possible suspect in the assassination, and if Syria refuses to cooperate, the Security Council would consider "further measures," including economic sanctions. When Bolton was asked whether the detention provision would apply to Assad, he replied: "It absolutely includes the president of Syria. No person is above the law."
Posted by: Fred 2005-10-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=133270