Syria assures UN to help in Hariri’s probe

DAMASCUS—President Bashar al-Assad promised on Thursday to cooperate with a U.N. inquiry into the killing of a former Lebanese prime minister, but said Syria would not sacrifice its own national interest in the process.
The young leader, in a defiant speech carried live on Syrian television, made clear he believed the U.N. mission was part of a wider international game to force Damascus to its knees. “No matter what we do and how much we cooperate, the result after a month will be that ‘Syria did not cooperate’... but we have to do our duty,” Assad said at Damascus University.
Soon after Assad’s speech, French President Jacques Chirac urged Syria to cooperate with the inquiry and said France would support imposing sanctions on Damascus if it did not do so. Reiterating that Syria had no hand in the February 14 killing of Rafik al-Hariri, Assad said he would not let cooperation with the U.N. investigation damage Syria’s security and stability.
“The issue is not criminal any more, let’s not waste time thinking about this. Syria is not involved either on a state level or on individual one,” Assad said in a 75-minute speech delivered largely without notes. He did not refer directly to a request by chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis to question six Syrian officials in Lebanon. They include Assef Shawkat, the president’s powerful brother-in-law and military intelligence chief.
Assad said Syria had done its best to secure its border with Iraq in its own interest, not just in response to U.S. requests. He invited Iraq’s president and prime minister to Syria, saying Damascus was committed to helping stabilize its neighbor.
The United States accuses Syria of allowing foreign insurgents to cross its border into Iraq, supporting Palestinian and Lebanese militants, and continued meddling in Lebanon. Mehlis has until December 15 to complete his inquiry and report to the Security Council. In an interim report last month he criticized Syria for not cooperating properly with his mission.
That report spoke of evidence pointing to Syrian and Lebanese involvement in Hariri’s killing and said it would be hard to imagine how such a plot could have gone ahead without the knowledge of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services.—Agencies