Syria, Lebanon: UN Findings False

Syria on Friday rejected U.N. findings that linked Damascus to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri as false, unprofessional and politicized.

Lebanon's president, vowing not to leave office, denied a U.N. claim he received a phone call minutes before the killing.

"I think the report is far from professional and will not lead us to the truth," Mehdi Dakhlallah, the Syrian information minister, said in an interview on Al-Jazeera television from the Syrian capital.

He said the report, about which he had seen media reports but did not have an official text, was "100 per cent politicized" and "contained false accusations."

The report, submitted to the U.N. Security Council late Thursday, implicated top Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials in the Feb. 14 assassination of Hariri in massive bombing in Beirut that also killed 20 others.

It also raised questions about Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, who it said received a phone call minutes before the blast from the brother of a prominent member of a pro-Syrian group, who also called one of the four Lebanese generals, Raymond Azar, who have been arrested in the probe.

Lahoud's office "categorically denies" the media reports about Lahoud receiving a phone call, saying "there is no truth to it."

The statement said the accusations are part of continued campaigns against the president and the office "and the national responsibilities he shoulders and will continue to do so at this delicate stage in Lebanon's history."

Since the arrest of four Lebanese generals in August as suspects, anti-Syrian groups have focused on Lahoud, demanding his resignation. Lahoud has refused to step down, saying his hands are clean and that he supports punishing those found guilty of killing Hariri.

The decision to assassinate Hariri "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services," the report said.

"While the report did not contain 'smoking gun' evidence about who was directly involved, the lengthy chronology of the events surrounding the assassination concludes that Syrian and Lebanese officials were involved and adds fuel to the stated interest by several Security Council nations to take stronger action at the U.N. against Syria," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk.

U.N. officials gave investigators two more months to pursue the probe and set Security Council debate on the report for Tuesday.

The strongly worded report by chief investigator Detlev Mehlis didn't call for the arrest of any Syrians, but it was highly critical of the Syrian government. It accused Syrian authorities of trying to mislead the investigation, and directly accused Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa of lying in a letter sent to Mehlis' commission.

Earlier this week, a U.S. official and two U.N. diplomats said the United States and France were preparing new Security Council resolutions critical of Syria over its alleged involvement in the assassination and alleged arms funneling to Lebanese militias.

The 53-page report painstakingly outlines Hariri's relationship with Lebanese and Syrian officials, and the events leading up to the assassination, which it said appeared to have been political. The report was based on the findings of an initial brief U.N. investigation, statements from 244 witnesses, crime scene exhibits, and the work of 30 investigators from 17 countries.

The report said the intelligence services of Syria and Lebanon kept tabs on Hariri before his assassination by wiretapping his phone, and there was evidence a telecommunications antenna was jammed near the scene of the car bomb.

The report quotes a Syrian witness living in Lebanon who claimed to have worked for Syrian intelligence in Lebanon as naming several officials who conspired to assassinate Hariri. They included Brig. Gen. Rustum Ghazale, the last Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon who was in charge when Hariri was assassinated, and Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan, who was Lebanese commander of the Presidential Guards Brigade at the time of the assassination.

Mehlis' team had already named Hamdan and three other Lebanese generals, all close to Syria, as suspects in the assassination, and Lebanon has arrested them.

"If the investigation is to be completed, it is essential that the government of Syria fully cooperate with the investigating authorities, including by allowing interviews to be held outside Syria and for interviewees not to be accompanied by Syrian officials," Mehlis said.

In a letter accompanying the report, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he would extend Mehlis' investigation until Dec. 15, which would allow the team to continue its work and help the Lebanese authorities.

In Lebanon, authorities had increased security ahead of the report's findings. Many there blame Syria for Hariri's assassination. Syria has denied involvement and so have the four Lebanese generals.

Hariri's death led to demonstrations against Syria and magnified the international pressure on Damascus to withdraw its troops, which it eventually did. The Security Council approved a probe into Hariri's assassination on April 8.

The report said a Syrian witness living in Lebanon who claimed to have worked for Syrian intelligence in Lebanon told the commission that "senior Lebanese and Syrian officials decided to assassinate Rafik Hariri" about two weeks after the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution in September 2004 demanding the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

The witness, who was not identified, claimed a senior Lebanese security official went to Syria several times to plan the crime. At the beginning of January 2005, a high-ranking Syrian officer posted in Lebanon told the witness that "Hariri was a big problem to Syria."

"Approximately a month later the officer told the witness that there soon would be an 'earthquake' that would re-write the history of Lebanon," the report said.

Minutes before the bomb went off, Mahmoud Abdel-Al, the brother of Sheik Ahmed Abdel-Al, made a call to Lahoud's mobile phone and another to the mobile phone of Brig. Gen. Raymond Azar, then head of Lebanon's military intelligence. The brothers are both members of the pro-Syrian Al-Ahbash Sunni Muslim Orthodox group and the report called the sheik "a key figure in an ongoing investigation."