"No one wants there to be clashes, fitna (strife within the Muslim community), between Lebanese," Assad said after lunchtime talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy centerd on Lebanon, for decades dominated by Syria.

Hariri was assassinated in a massive car bombing in Beirut that also killed another 22 people, and a UN-backed tribunal tasked with finding who was responsible has said it will issue indictments "very soon." The killing led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops who had been in neighboring Lebanon since the end of the devastating 1975-1990 civil war.

Asked about an eventual Syrian-Saudi initiative in Lebanon, Assad said that "the solution can only be Lebanese, it can be neither Syrian, nor Saudi, nor French.

"We (Syrians) don't want to intervene, we don't want to interfere in an internal Lebanese situation," Assad said.

Western diplomats and Lebanese political sources say they expect the indictments to name members of Hezbollah.

The group, part of a fragile national unity government, denies involvement in the Hariri killing and Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he will not allow the arrest of any members.

Diplomats in Damascus and Beirut expect the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, based in the Netherlands, to issue draft indictments as early as this week.

Their contents will not be made public, tribunal spokesman Crispin Thorold said, and a pre-trial judge will take around two months to decide whether to approve them — at which point they may or may not be published.

Media reports of leaked US diplomatic cables have also fueled Lebanese skepticism over the tribunal's impartiality. The Daily Star newspaper on Monday quoted a UN investigator casting doubt on the legal basis for detaining four generals who were held for four years without charge.

Cables cited by the Daily Star and Al-Akhbar newspaper also revealed the investigators repeatedly sought assistance from the United States, including requests for intelligence, wire-tapping capabilities, satellite imagery and criminal analysts.