Bush Urges U.N. Session On Syria

President Bush on Friday called on the United Nations to convene a session as soon as possible to deal with a U.N. investigative report implicating Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

"The report strongly suggests that the politically motivated assassination could not have taken place without Syrian involvement," Mr. Bush said after helping dedicate a new pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Southern California.

The U.N.'s exhaustive report, which Mr. Bush called "deeply disturbing," linked the brother-in-law of Syria's president to the Feb. 14 car bomb that killed Hariri and 20 others, and said Lebanese intelligence officials helped organize it.

The report stopped short of directly blaming Syrian President Bashar Assad for the killing. But it said the regime failed to cooperate in the inquiry. The report also alleged Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa lied in a letter to the investigating commission.

Mr. Bush was not specific about what steps the international community should take against Syria. He said the United States has started talking with U.N. officials and with Arab governments.

"Today a serious report came out that requires the world to look at very carefully and respond accordingly," Mr. Bush said.

Syria hotly dismissed the report and geared up to fight growing Western sentiment to punish it with economic sanctions.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier Friday that Syria must be held accountable for the slayings.

"Accountability is going to be very important for the international community," she said during a visit to Alabama.

CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk says that even before its formal release, "the findings of the U.N. investigative commission were mired in controversy because the names of senior Syrian officials, including the president's brother and brother-in-law, who were named in an earlier draft of the report, were deleted late Thursday."

German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who led the U.N. probe, told a hastily called news conference that he decided to delete the names when he learned Thursday morning the report would be made public because the Syrians had only been identified by a witness interviewed by his investigators.

Since their alleged involvement had not been corroborated, "it could give the wrong impression" of guilt and the presumption of innocence must remain, he said.

The U.N. report is the latest development in what has been an extremely bad diplomatic patch for the authoritarian Syrian regime, which is facing intensifying censure from many parts of the world over its conduct in the Middle East.

The findings were also likely to deepen explosive political divisions between Lebanon's pro- and anti-Syrian groups. Syria's foes there hailed the report as a long-awaited truth-telling about Damascus' complicity in the assassination and its interference in Lebanese affairs. Pro-Syrian politicians vilified the findings.

Hariri's murder touched off street protests in Lebanon and heated up international pressures on Damascus, forcing Assad's regime to end a nearly three-decade military occupation of its neighbor.

Syria also has been under increasing U.S. pressure to stop interfering in Lebanon, to shut its border with Iraq to anti-American insurgents and to halt support for Palestinian militant groups. Syria has denied doing any of those things.

"This is the worst period in Syria's modern history," said Hazem Saghieh, a senior Lebanese columnist with the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat. "I do not rule out a confrontation with the international community and sanctions on Syria."
While the U.N. findings did not directly incriminate Assad, the report cited a witness who said Assef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law and Syria's military intelligence chief, forced a man to tape a claim of responsibility for Hariri's killing 15 days before it occurred.

The report also said Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa lied in a letter to the investigating commission.

Assad's government repeated its claim of innocence in the Hariri killing and declared that the U.N. document was heavily politicized because of Syria's staunch anti-Israeli position.

Information Minister Mahdi Dakhlallah said the report lacked hard evidence and was based on witnesses "who are well known for their anti-Syria stands."

The report also said Lebanese intelligence officials helped organize the Hariri killing. It further said Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, got a phone call minutes before the assassination from the brother of a prominent member of a pro-Syrian group who also called one of four Lebanese generals arrested later in the killing.

Lahoud's office issued a statement "categorically" denying that the president received such a phone call. "There is no truth to it," the statement said.

In Damascus, few Syrians were willing to comment, but those who did took the Assad regime's view of the U.N. report.

"This is a big fabrication," said Basil Deheim, a 26-year-old marketing executive sitting with friends at a packed coffee shop.

"I don't believe it," he added, pointing to a large-screen TV showing continuous coverage of the probe on an Arab satellite channel. No other customer was watching.

Even before the report, Syria was suffering growing isolation, with an unstated moratorium in place on visits by high-ranking Western officials and the shelving of a European Union-Syria trade agreement. Syria's relations with other Arab countries also have deteriorated.

The drive for sanctions against the Assad regime was under full steam. Earlier this week, a U.S. official and two U.N. diplomats said the United States and France were preparing Security Council resolutions critical of Syria for its role in the Hariri assassination and its alleged arming of anti-Israeli militias in Lebanon.

Sanctions would further weaken Syria's struggling economy. A recent study by the United Nations Development Program and the Syrian government found that 5.3 million of the country's 18 million people live in poverty. Unemployment is estimated to be at least 20 percent.