DAMASCUS, 17 December 2005 — Syria welcomed yesterday a UN Security Council resolution that extended a probe into the murder of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri but did not widen it to include dozens of other attacks on anti-Syrian figures. Hariri was killed in a Beirut car bombing in February, setting off a massive domestic and international outcry that led to Syria pulling its troops out of Lebanon after dominating the country for 30 years. Three more prominent anti-Syrians have been murdered since then, the most recent victim being newspaper magnate and MP Gebran Tueni this week. Damascus has been widely blamed for all four murders, something it strongly denies.
The resolution, unanimously adopted by the council on Thursday, extended the investigation for six months, maintaining pressure on Syria to cooperate. The Syrian press said yesterday that Resolution 1644 was “balanced” and that Damascus continued to be committed to cooperate “fully” with the Hariri probe. It also quoted Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Faisal Mekdad, as reiterating that “Syria is innocent,” and promising “full cooperation” with the Mehlis panel.
German magistrate Detlev Mehlis, the outgoing chief of the inquiry panel, said in an interview with CNN on Thursday that there was an obvious link between the spate of assassinations in Lebanon. “We will have to look and we are looking for links between the assassinations as, pretty obviously, there are links between all these assassinations that happened after the death of Hariri,” he said.
