By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 21 2005 (IPS)

The threat of sanctions is looming over Syria with a United Nations investigation implicating government officials in the assassination of leading Lebanese businessman and former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

Authorised by a Security Council resolution and later established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the probe says numerous leads point to the involvement of Syrian officials.

“The findings requires strong follow-up from the Security Council,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters soon after the U.N.’s International Independent Investigation Commission made its report public Friday.

Bolton, who is known for his hawkish and unilateralist views on world affairs, described the report as “hard-hitting”. He did not use the word “sanctions”, but made it clear that in response to the investigators’ findings, Washington was looking at “a range of options”.

In the past, the George W. Bush administration has hinted that it could impose sanctions against the Arab nation, which it regards as one of the countries sponsoring terrorist groups.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC Friday that the Council would consider sanctions when it meets in a special session to consider the report.

“The Commission has checked and examined this evidence to the best of its knowledge,” they wrote in the preface. “Until the investigation is complete, all new leads and evidence are fully analysed, and an independent and impartial prosecution mechanism is set up, one cannot know the complete story of what happened.”

Hariri, a billionaire politician, and 22 others were killed as a result of a car bombing in the Lebanese capital of Beirut last February. The incident led to calls for the withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence agents who had been in Lebanon since the early stages of the country’s civil war (1975-1980).

The U.N. investigators embrace the notion that Hariri’s assassination was politically motivated because he opposed Syria’s influence on the governance of Lebanon.

“The Commission’s investigation has confirmed what many in Lebanese have long asserted, that senior Syrian intelligence officials had a powerful day-to-day and overall strategic influence on the government of Lebanon,” the investigators said in their report.

“The apparent growing conflict between Hariri and senior Syrian officials, including President Bashar Assad, was a central aspect of the information provided to the Commission through interviews and documents.”

In the eyes of the investigators, a meeting in the Syrian capital of Damascus between Hariri and Assad that took place on Aug. 26, 2004 appeared “to bring the conflict to a head”. At that meeting, they said Assad informed Hariri, who was then prime minister of Lebanon, that he wanted an extension of the term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, which Hariri opposed.

Syrian leaders critical of the Commission’s methods argue that the probe should be focused on facts pertinent to the incident instead of political developments in the region.

“This is a big lie,” said Fayssal Mekad, Syrian ambassador to the U.N. “It’s not a credible report.”

The investigators complained that Syria did not fully cooperate with them, but Mekad asserted that his country “did not hinder the investigations”. He also raised questions about why the report was leaked to the media hours before it reached the members of the Security Council for their consideration.

On Thursday, a U.N. spokesman told journalists that the report would be available after the secretary-general had submitted it to the Security Council. But after U.N. officials realised that parts of the report had already been given to certain media outlets, they decided to make it public.

“It was supposed to be confidential,” Detlev Mehlis, a German national who led the investigation, told reporters in response to questions about why certain parts of the report were deleted before it was made public.

He said he made changes to the report after he learned that the U.N. had decided to make it public. “Otherwise it could have given a wrong impression about certain witnesses. It was done so to maintain the presumption of innocence,” he explained. “Witnesses could be wrong.”

The parts of the report that were deleted before making it public mentioned the names of the brother and brother-in-law of Pres. Assad.

Syria’s ambassador emphasised that the report is “based on allegations… There are no direct incitements at this time.”

In addition to the Syrians, the report also points to the possible involvement of Lebanese officials in the car bombing, which has been strongly denied by the government in Beirut.

U.N. officials say Annan has extended the mandate of the Commission until December and that a second U.N. report on Lebanon is expected next week.

To follow up on both reports, the United States and other countries have been discussing language for two resolutions on Syria that are likely to be introduced as early as next week, according to diplomatic observers who say that sanctions against Syria are also under consideration.

Though not ruling out such a possibility, the Syrian ambassador told IPS: “Yes, but not at this stage.”

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