U.S., Britain Call For Action On Syria

U.S., Britain call for action on Syria
Syria rejects report on assassination as American plot

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9767373/

Updated: 6:05 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2005

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The United States and Britain called Sunday for an international stand against Syria in the wake of a U.N. report that implicated Syrian officials in the assassination of a former Lebanese leader. Syria countered by discounting the report as an American plot and began a diplomatic drive to explain its position.

A Syrian official, deputy Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, said the pressure on Syria was because of America’s aim of dominating the region. He denied that he had threatened the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, days before Hariri was assassinated as the U.N. report said.

“This is totally untrue,” Moallem said in the first response by a Syrian official named in the report.

The U.S.-British call for action, in a joint BBC interview by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, underlined the growing pressure on Syria as it faces possible action by the U.N. Security Council later this week.

‘False testimony’
“The report indicated that people of a high level of this Syrian regime were implicated,” Straw told the BBC. “We also have evidence .... of false testimony being given by senior people in the regime. This is very serious.”

Rice called for “a firm response” from the international community.

Officials in Washington have said privately that the United States is considering pushing for possible U.N. sanctions against Syria, or to have any criminal cases heard by an international tribunal.

Straw said earlier that U.N. Security Council members would consider sanctions. But it is not clear if the United States and Britain have members like Russia on their side.

French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, in an interview published Sunday in the Le Parisien newspaper, called on Syria to cooperate with a U.N. investigation into Hariri’s murder and said any country involved in the killing should face economic sanctions.

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday sent a message to the members of the U.N. Security Council concerning Syria’s position and the consultations on the U.N. report, Syria’s official news agency reported. The Syrian Foreign Ministry delivered the letters to representatives of the countries in Damascus, but the content of the message was not divulged.

Syria’s parliament also set up a committee of specialists to study the U.N. report.

Also in Damascus on Sunday, the Central Command of Syria’s National Progressive Front criticized the U.N. report, saying it was based on “suspicions and testimonies of unreliable persons who lack credibility.”

The front, headed by Assad, is Syria’s highest decision-making body. A front statement, carried by Syria’s official news agency SANA, said the report contained “contradictions and twisting of facts.”

In addition, about 100 Syrian lawyers marched to the United Nations’ headquarters here to protest the report. They handed a U.N. official a letter addressed to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, which said the report contained “gross legal mistakes and violations of the simplest rules and measures of judicial authorities.”

The letter said the report was based on the testimony of witnesses biased against Syria politically.

‘Have put you into a corner’
The U.N report, issued last week, implicated Syria in the Feb. 14 bombing that killed Hariri, an opponent of Syria’s domination of Lebanon. The report also said the Syrian government did not cooperate with the U.N. investigation — a charge that Syria also denies.

“I did not go to Premier Hariri to make threats. I went to him to inform him about my mission and ask him to cooperate in order for the mission to succeed,” Moallem said in a call to a Syrian TV talk show.

The U.N. report refers to a tape of a Feb. 1 conversation between Moallem and Hariri, which records Hariri complaining that the security services were waging a campaign against him.

“But Lebanon will never be ruled from Syria. This will no longer happen,” Hariri told Moallem, according to the report.

The report says Moallem told Hariri “we and the (security) services here have put you into a corner.”

“Please do not take things lightly,” the report quotes Moallem as saying.

The U.N. report said the tape “clearly contradicts” the testimony that Moallem gave to the U.N. commission investigating Hariri’s killing on Sept. 20.

In that testimony, Moallem “falsely described the Feb. 1 meeting as ’friendly and constructive’ and avoided giving direct answers to the questions put to him,” the report said.

The report found that the bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 other people in Beirut on Feb. 14 could not have been carried out without the complicity of the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services. Syria has dismissed this as unproven allegation.

“They want to subject the region to the hegemony of America,” Moallem said on the Syrian show, monitored in Beirut.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.