Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Vice President have agreed for the first time to talk to a UN inquiry into the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, a UN report said today.
The UN investigators, in their third report to the UN Security Council, said they were closer to a detailed understanding of how the plot was carried out and predicted success in getting to the bottom of the crime, in part because of better cooperation from Syria.
The new report was the first since Belgian Serge Brammertz took over the inquiry in January into the killing of Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on February 14, 2005.
But he gave far less information than his predecessor, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who accused Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers of involvement in the slaying and named a host of suspects. Mehlis also accused Vice President Farouq al-Shara of providing "false information."
Cooperation with Syria improved in the last three months, the report said. Syria, which denies the charges, has waged a campaign to discredit the commission and Mehlis was refused an interview with Assad.
Nonetheless, the report said that "the commission is confident that its support to the Lebanese authorities will result in a successful outcome to the investigations within a realistic time-frame."
"A significant number of new lines of inquiry, identified since January 2006, have already enabled faster-than-expected progress in two important areas," the report said.
Hariri was a strong critic of Syria's decades-long domination of Lebanon, and many Lebanese suspect Syrian involvement in his killing, which Damascus flatly denies.
His murder in a suicide truck bombing in the streets of Beirut sparked international outrage and Lebanese protests that ultimately led to Syria's withdrawal from the country.
Brammertz, on leave as deputy prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Court, has spent much of his time reviewing Mehlis' files to see if they can stand up in a trial, diplomats close to the investigation said.
He concluded that "the commission is closer to a more complete understanding of how the preparatory work was undertaken, how those who participated on the day performed their respective tasks, what those tasks were before, during and after the attack and of the overall modus operandi employed by the perpetrators for the attack."
The report referred to the killing as a highly complex "terrorist operation" and said those involved in carrying it out appeared to be "very 'professional' in their approach."