BEIRUT: The chief UN investigator looking into the killing of Lebanon's former premier Rafiq Hariri has asked Damascus to let him probe the reported suicide of Syria's interior minister, the As-Safir newspaper said yesterday. The minister, General Ghazi Kanaan, headed Syria's military intelligence in Lebanon for 20 years. He was found dead in his Damascus office on Wednesday.Quoting Lebanese security sources, the newspaper said investigator Detlev Mehlis had "officially asked Syria to authorise him to inquire into this suicide and to carry out an autopsy" on the general. Damascus has said that Kanaan shot himself in the mouth with his personal revolver. Some Lebanese papers, including Al-Mostaqbal, which belongs to the Hariri family, have questioned Syria's official version, while sceptics say he may have been murdered to keep him from revealing what he may have known about the Hariri case. Just hours before his death, Kanaan denied a Lebanese television report that he had received 10 million dollars for backing Hariri's election in Lebanon's 2000 parliamentary election. Last month, Kanaan was interviewed by Mehlis' commission looking into Hariri's murder on February 14. Mehlis, a German prosecutor, heads the panel, which has to report to the UN Security Council by October 25.
Meanwhile, Lebanon has taken security measures similar to a "state of emergency" ahead of the publication this month of a UN report into the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, a minister said in remarks published yesterday. "We have taken steps similar to those of a state of emergency in order to deal with any possible repercussions," Interior Minister Hassen Sabeh was quoted by the An-Nahar daily newspaper as saying. "It is normal to expect that the report will spark political and security reactions whatever its content." Sabeh did not say what measures had been taken, but police and troops have increased patrols in the capital and surrounding area.