DAMASCUS, 30 October 2005 — Faced with the threat of UN sanctions, Syria launched its own investigation yesterday into the killing of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The inquiry, ordered by Syrian President Bashar Assad, will question Syrian civilians and military personnel and cooperate with a UN inquiry that has implicated senior Syrian officials in the Feb. 14 assassination.
Detlev Mehlis, leading the UN investigation into Hariri’s murder, urged Syria at a Security Council meeting earlier this week to set up its own probe and to cooperate fully with international investigators. Syria has denied any role in Hariri’s killing and dismissed Mehlis’ report as politicized, but it is under growing international pressure to cooperate or risk economic sanctions.
“The committee will cooperate with the International Independent Investigation Commission and the Lebanese judicial authorities in everything that relates to the investigative procedures,” a Foreign Ministry source told reporters.
Syria also denied that its territories are being used by militant groups and confirmed that the offices of all Palestinian groups, including those of the Islamic Jihad, have been shut down for years.
Quoted by the state-run Syrian television, an official source at the Foreign Ministry said that no militant groups are using the country’s territory to launch or give instructions to carry out military operation in any other parts of the world, included in the Occupied Territories.
The source was responding to a demand on Friday by the Middle East Quartet, which includes the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, that Damascus should immediately close the offices of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for carrying out a suicide attack in Israel last week that killed five people.
A statement released by the United Nations on behalf of the Quartet on Friday also urged Syria to stop allowing “armed groups engaged in terrorist acts to use Syrian territory.”
