DAMASCUS, 3 November 2005 — Under pressure to cooperate with a UN probe into former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri’s murder, Syria is seeking a formula for compliance that does not sacrifice its sovereignty, analysts said yesterday.
Syria has vowed to work with international investigators, even as regime supporters and officials have blasted as false and biased both the probe’s findings and UN Security Council Resolution 1636 warning Damascus to fully comply. “Damascus is wedged between two confronting legal rationales: International and internal,” said Joseph Bahtout, a researcher at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. Bahtout said that Damascus could agree to the interrogation of high-ranking Syrian officials, suspects and witnesses outside Syria and in the absence of Syrian officials.
However, he said, such “a scenario which would give the (German UN prosecutor Detlev) Mehlis commission prerogatives like the UN (arms) inspection missions in (Saddam Hussein’s) Iraq, to the detriment of Syrian sovereignty.” He also predicted “another battle between Damascus and the (UN) commission” because Resolution “1636 impedes Syrian sovereignty, which will be gradually eroded by international demands.”
“Despite Syrian objections over (Resolution) 1636 which is considered ‘unfair’, authorities must collaborate to unveil the truth about the crime at a time when the international situation is dangerous,” Syrian writer Ahmed Hajj Ali told AFP.
“This cooperation must be done in the framework of Syrian sovereignty because no state will accept that its arm be twisted and that others dictate the legal, theoretical and practical methods by which it must collaborate,” Hajj Ali said. The probe said in its report released on Oct. 19 that it had found “converging evidence” of top level Syrian and Lebanese involvement in the Hariri murder.
Syria has decided to set up its own commission of inquiry, while denying the UN’s findings in its interim report that implicated Syria in the assassination.
Arab League Secretary Amr Moussa on Tuesday said he planned to visit Syria and Lebanon next week for talks with officials.
“Arab countries fear that Syrian officials will underestimate the seriousness of the threat over their country and continue to procrastinate over the demands” of the UN commission, said an Arab diplomat in Cairo.
Meanwhile, Syria yesterday released 190 political prisoners under an amnesty.
The measure, which SANA said was meant to “fortify national unity,” comes as Damascus faces mounting international pressure following the UN resolution.
President Bashar Assad has released hundreds of political prisoners since assuming power in 2000.
The state-run Syrian Television yesterday announced that the amnesty would be followed by a series of measures the government is planning to take on the basis that “the homeland is for all”.
