October 21, 2005 - 12:50 PM

U.S. wants action against Syria in Lebanese killing

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush called on the United Nations on Friday to quickly meet and consider a response to an investigation that implicated Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Hariri and 20 others were killed on February 14 by a bomb in Beirut. A U.N. report said the decision to kill Hariri "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials" colluding with counterparts in Lebanon.

Syrian officials in Damascus, Washington and at the United Nations dismissed the report as political and said the charges were false.

"The report is deeply disturbing," Bush said, adding that he had asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to request that the United Nations "convene a session as quickly as possible" to discuss the report.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Security Council members would consider sanctions but he did not elaborate on how much support such a proposal would get.

A council session has already been planned for Tuesday. It may ask for Syria to cooperate with the U.N. investigation led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who released a 53-page report late on Thursday. But it is uncertain whether Bush was seeking a larger, higher-level session.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan extended the Mehlis investigation for three months, which suggests no strong action is expected until the probe ends on December 15.

U.S. ambassador John Bolton said the first order of business was to make sure Syria cooperated with the probe, which faulted Damascus for giving false information.

"In the absence of serious Syrian cooperation on substantive matters, the mission can't get to the ultimate truth," Bolton told reporters in New York. "That is what is seems to me the focus the U.N. Security Council should be."

The Bush administration has been at odds with Syria for quite some time, accusing Damascus of doing too little to stop foreign fighters from entering neighboring Iraq. Syria, in turn, says the United States has not done enough to secure the border or deliver technical help it has promised.

DISPUTE OVER REPORT CONTENT

At the United Nations, the report's credibility came into question after a final version of it omitted the names of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brother and brother-in-law from a key paragraph on who made the decision to kill Hariri.

The paragraph in the initial report named the Syrian president's brother, Maher Assad, and his brother-in-law Maj. Gen. Asef Shawkat, among others. Shawkat is mentioned in other sections of the report as involved in the assassination plot but Maher Assad is not.

Mehlis said he deleted the names when he learnt the report would be made public, because he only had one witness.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric attributed the flap to a clerical error and denied that Secretary-General Kofi Annan had influenced the final report.

A witness quoted in the report said Shawkat set up an Islamic militant, Ahmed Abu Adass, as a decoy to claim responsibility for the plot.

Shawkat, Syria's military intelligence chief, allegedly forced Adass to confess on a videotape two weeks before the assassination. But the actual suicide bomber was probably an Iraqi who thought he was killing Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a visitor in Beirut shortly before the bombing, the report said.

The report said a key person in touch with all the plotters had telephoned Lebanese President Emile Lahoud minutes before the explosion. The disclosure prompted calls for Lahoud's resignation among anti-Syrian parliamentarians in Beirut.

Lahoud's press office denied the president took such a call and indicated he would not be forced from office.

In the first reaction from Israel, Health Minister Dan Naveh said it was best that his government keep a distance from the controversy.

"I don't think it would be wise of Israel's government to express a view to intervene or deal with this matter. We must let the Americans lead this and not speak up about every matter, " he told Israel's Channel 1 television.

Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhl-Allah dismissed the U.N. findings as political.

"The report is far from the truth," he told Al Jazeera TV. "It was not professional and will not arrive at the truth but will be part of a deception and great tension in this region."

Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, told Reuters the Mehlis report was biased and unfair.

"The report is full of political rumors, gossip and hearsay and it has not a single shred of evidence that will be accepted by any court of law," he said.

Hariri was a strong critic of Syria's domination of Lebanon, and many Lebanese have long suspected a link between his killing and the Syrians and their Lebanese allies.

His death sparked world outrage and Lebanese protests that forced Syria to end its 29-year military presence.

The report said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara as well as his deputy gave investigators false information.

But the report made no mention of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, found dead last week in his office of an apparent suicide three weeks after he was questioned by the Mehlis's team.

(Additional reporting by Irwin Arieff, Nadim Ladki. Lin Noueihed and Alaa Shahinet)