DAMASCUS, 24 October 2005 — Syria’s deputy foreign minister yesterday denied he had threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri days before he was assassinated. As the United States and Britain called for a firm international stand against Syria in the wake of a UN report implicating Syrian officials in Hariri’s murder, Lebanon arrested a man who had telephoned President Emile Lahoud minutes before the assassination.

“This is totally untrue,” Walid Moallem, the Syrian deputy foreign minister, said, responding to the charges in the UN report. “I did not go to Premier Hariri to make threats. I went to him to inform him about my mission and ask him to cooperate in order for the mission to succeed,” Moallem said during a call to a talk show on Syrian TV.

The UN report refers to a tape of a Feb. 1 conversation between Moallem and Hariri, which records Hariri complaining that the security services were waging a campaign against him.

“But Lebanon will never be ruled from Syria. This will no longer happen,” Hariri told Moallem, according to the report.

The report says Moallem told Hariri “we and the (security) services here have put you into a corner.”

“Please do not take things lightly,” the report quotes Moallem as saying.

The UN report said the tape of the conversation “clearly contradicts” the testimony that Moallem gave to the UN commission investigating Hariri’s killing on Sept. 20. In that testimony, Moallem “falsely described the Feb. 1 meeting as ‘friendly and constructive’ and avoided giving direct answers to the questions put to him,” the report said.

Mahmoud Abdel-Al, who is also member of the Islamic charity Al-Ahbache, was arrested late Saturday on the order of Lebanon’s top prosecutor, Said Mirza, judicial sources said.

His detention is sure to ratchet up the pressure even more on President Lahoud, who has faced impassioned calls from opponents to step down ever since the murder of the five-time premier in the February bomb blast.

The arrest is the first to be made in connection with the murder since the report’s publication on Thursday. However four other suspects, all seen as close to Lahoud, were arrested in August and are still in custody.

The move is the latest twist in a dramatic sequence of events after UN investigators probing the assassination implicated security officials in both Lebanon and Syria in their report.

Lahoud, a Maronite Christian, was forced to deny on Friday claims in the UN report that he received a call on his mobile phone from Mahmoud Abdel-Al minutes before the bomb blast.

According to the UN report, Abdel-Al phoned Lahoud at 12.47 p.m. from his own mobile, just minutes before the blast, and followed this call up at 12.49 p.m. with one to Raymound Azar, the then head of Lebanese military intelligence.

Azar was arrested over the murder in August along with three other close aides of Lahoud — presidential guard head Mustafa Hamdan, former general security chief Jamil Al-Sayed and ex-internal security head Ali Al-Hage.

The United States and Britain ratcheted up pressure on Syria, saying the UN probe findings were “very serious” and the world must act. Washington is already trying to arrange a quick, UN Security Council meeting to consider a response to the inquiry.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC Television in a joint interview the investigation strongly implicated Syria and indicated attempts at a cover-up.

“I am quite sure that when the international community gets together we will decide what to do but it can’t be... left lying on the table,” Rice said. “This really has to be dealt with.”

Straw said: “The report indicates that people of a high level of this Syrian regime were implicated.” He added: “We also have evidence from the... report of false testimony being given by senior people in the regime. This is very serious.”

— Additional input from agencies