Dubai: Washington urged the UN Security Council yesterday to "increase the pressure" on Syria after the second installment of Detlev Mehlis's report implicated top Syrian officials in the murder of Rafik Hariri.

"We believe it's important, when the Security Council discusses this report, that they continue to keep the pressure, and increase the pressure, on Syria," White House spokesman Scott McClellan was quoted as saying by AFP. He declined to say precisely how the council should do so after examining the report by the chief UN investigator.

Damascus, however, charged that the report is littered with errors. "The prattlers are mistaken if they imagine that Syria will be perturbed by reports of an investigator littered with erroneous and fabricated details, of invented 'proofs' and false witnesses,'" said the state newspaper Tishrin.

In the UAE, the authorities were investigating the claim that the truck used in the explosion that killed Hariri had probably been shipped through a UAE port. "We received a request from Mehlis.

The investigations are under way," a senior official told Gulf News. "The investigators gave us with the chassis number of the truck. But we found that it is not matching with any of the numbers of the cars that were shipped" through UAE, the official said.