International > UN investigator to visit Syria over Hariri murder

The Syrian foreign ministry source said the date had been set after coordinating with U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis.

"Mr. Mehlis expressed his happiness with our positive response and cooperation," the source said.

Damascus has said it will cooperate with the U.N. inquiry led by Mehlis, who wants to interview Syrian officials about the February 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri that transformed Lebanon's political landscape.

The United Nations had complained Syria was not fully cooperating with the inquiry into the killing of Hariri along with 20 others in a huge bombing in Beirut.

U.N. officials were not immediately available for comment and it was not clear who Mehlis would meet in Damascus.

Mehlis wants to question Syrian officials once responsible for security in Lebanon, which was controlled by its larger neighbor after the 1975-1990 civil war, but said on Thursday there were no Syrian suspects in the case so far.

Hariri's assassination sparked major anti-Syrian protests that forced Damascus to bow to international pressure to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in late April.

Many Lebanese blame Syria and its Lebanese allies for the killing, but Damascus denies any role.

A Lebanese magistrate issued formal arrest warrants on Saturday against four pro-Syrian generals charged with murder, attempted murder and carrying out a terrorist act.

Judicial sources said Judge Elias Eid issued the warrants after interrogating the four men detained on Tuesday on Mehlis's recommendation for their role in planning the attack.

Defense lawyers are now expected to ask that the four men who headed the main security agencies when Hariri was killed be released on bail while investigations continue, they said.

Eid questioned for three hours Republican Guard chief Brigadier General Mustafa Hamdan, a close aide of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

GENERALS FACE JUDGE

Calls for Lahoud to resign have grown since the detention of Hamdan, the only Lebanese security chief to keep his job after parliamentary elections in June ushered in an anti-Syrian majority for the first time since the end of the civil war.

Lahoud has resisted calls from Syria's critics to step down and says he will stay until the end of his term in 2007.

Eid also questioned the former head of General Security Major General Jamil al-Sayyed, once the most powerful of the pro-Syrian security chiefs.

Lebanese police detained Hamdan and Sayyed, along with former police chief Major General Ali Hajj and ex-military intelligence chief Brigadier General Raymond Azar on Tuesday.

The U.N. team questioned them before handing them over to the Lebanese authorities, but judicial sources said the Lebanese magistrate had not been given access to all the evidence, witnesses or witness statements.

Mehlis told a news conference on Thursday he believed more people were involved in the bombing.

2005-09-04