A Lebanese cabinet minister has urged a UN commission to summon Syria's foreign minister for comments in which he suggested that the slain Lebanese statesman Rafiq al-Hariri had lied about being threatened by the Syrian president. Marwan Hamadeh, Lebanon's telecommunications minister, also said on Thursday that Farouk al-Sharaa, the Syrian official, should stand trial, accusing him of misleading the commission that is investigating al-Hariri's assassination.At a press conference on Wednesday, al-Sharaa had suggested al-Hariri lied to Lebanese politicians when he told them he was threatened by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, at a meeting on 26 August 2004. Al-Sharaa said al-Hariri "was unable to justify" his acceptance of the extension of Lahoud's mandate and so he had claimed that he had been threatened by the Syrian president. "This is my opinion," he added.
Hamadeh accused al-Sharaa of trying to mislead the UN investigation and said the commission should summon him. "We warn about the continuous attempt to pressure and terrorise the international investigating committee," Hamadeh said in a statement.
| Y'mean like threatening to kill the chief investigator?... Oh, but wait. That wasn't Syria. It was... ummm... somebody else. They said so, in fact. |