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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Beirut arrests pro-Syrian after Hariri report |
| 2005-10-23 |
| Lebanon on Sunday arrested a member of a pro-Syrian Islamist group, taking its first action in response to a UN report that pointed to Syrian involvement in the February assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the country's former prime minister. As the US and Britain kept up the pressure on Syria ahead of a meeting at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, a politician close to the Syrian government said Russia and China, permanent members of the Council, had given assurances to Damascus that they would block punitive measures against Syria. Syrian officials ratcheted up the anti-Lebanese rhetoric, accusing anti-Syrian elements in Lebanon of having influenced the report. But they held out the prospect of co-operating with the inquiry, led by Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor. The Mehlis report, released last Thursday, said there was "converging evidence" pointing at "both Lebanese and Syrian involvement" and called for a deeper probe of the Syrian role. It also cited a witness account of meetings at the presidential palace in Damascusto discuss the assassination. The witness claimed participants at the meeting included President Bashar al-Assad's brother Maher and his brother-in-law, Assef Chawkat, who is also the head of Syrian military intelligence. In Beirut, the Lebanese government at the weekend issued a statement fully supporting the findings of the UN team. Saad Hariri, son of the murdered leader, called for an international court to try the perpetrators. Lebanese police arrested a member of the Sunni Muslim al-Ahbash group, Mahmoud Abdel-Al. He was mentioned in the report as having made a call to the mobile telephone of Emile Lahoud, Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, minutes before the blast that killed Hariri and 22 others in the centre of Beirut. In Damascus, George Jabbour, a Syrian member of parliament who is close to the government, told the Financial Times that Russia and China had given assurances that they would block punitive measures at the Security Council. Riad Daoudi, an adviser to the Foreign Ministry who is in charge of liaising with the UN investigation, said the Damascus government would study any request to interview Syrians outside the country, one of the UN team's key demands. At a press conference, Mr Daoudi insisted that "figures opposed to Syria in Lebanon" had influenced the UN report, an allegation that he repeated several times. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, yesterday urged a "firm" international reaction. Jack Straw, the UK foreign secretary, said the findings were "very serious" for Syria. "What we do know is that the report indicates that people of a high level of this Syrian regime were implicated," he said. The US and its European allies are considering measures against Syria, possibly including sanctions on individuals named in the report. Pressure for strong action could further increase with the release, perhaps as early as today, of another report that looks at Damascus' compliance with UN resolution 1559, passed last year and calling for an end to outside interference in Lebanon. Israel's Haaretz newspaper yesterday said it had obtained a copy of the new report, which it claimed would indicate that "Syria's indirect military intervention and direct intelligence intervention in Lebanon continues, including arms shipments to various militias". UN officials, however, denied the Haaretz account. Additional reporting by Roula Khalaf in London and Mark Turner in New York |
| Posted by:lotp |