BEIRUT, 7 November 2005 — The chief UN investigator examining the killing of a former Lebanese prime minister has requested interviews with six senior Syrian intelligence officers, a paper reported yesterday quoting Lebanese sources.

Detlev Mehlis made the requests to the Syrian government via the United Nations to question the officers, who include Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law Assef Shawkat. The report said that Mehlis wanted the interviews to take place in Lebanon, not in Syria.

Mehlis, the German prosecutor trying to identify the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, has complained that Syrian security figures interviewed in Damascus last month appeared to give only prepared responses.

The UN Security Council demanded on Oct. 31 that Syria cooperate fully with Mehlis’ inquiry into the Beirut bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others or face “further action”.

Mehlis, who said in an interim report in October that “converging evidence” pointed to Syrian and Lebanese involvement in the assassination, has also accused Damascus of failing to cooperate properly with his mission.

Quoting unidentified Lebanese sources, the report said the men Mehlis has asked to question also include Maj. Gen. Bahjat Suleiman, former head of Syria’s internal intelligence and Rustom Ghazali, Syria’s last chief of intelligence in Lebanon.

A Syrian official told Reuters yesterday Damascus had not received any correspondence from the UN investigation commission yet and reiterated that Syria is willing to cooperate with the investigators in a “positive and flexible manner.”

The Syrian ambassador to London told Reuters in an interview on Friday that UN investigators would be allowed to question Syrian officials in Damascus on their own.

Iran said yesterday it would stand by Syria against any possible UN Security Council sanctions over the assassination. “Definitely we will support Syria as a friend,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference. Asefi said putting pressure on Syria, Iran’s staunchest ally in the Middle East, was “unacceptable”.

“We support Syria without any doubt. Syria is our friend,” Asefi told reporters.

“We think that the UN resolution has to be based on reality and cannot be arbitrary,” Asefi said.

“Just like the Lebanese government and people, and like the Hariri family, we want the criminals to be punished. But the resolutions should not be politicized,” he said.