Cairo: Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora urged Syria yesterday to cooperate with a UN probe into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, the official MENA news agency reported.
"We want the international commission to carry out its investigation without any impediments and we... hope that Syria cooperates with the international investigation commission," Siniora told reporters.
The Lebanese premier also called on Syria to stop supporting armed Palestinian groups in his country.
Siniora stressed the need for "an end to Syrian support for Palestinian gunmen outside the camps" if Damascus was truly concerned about Lebanon's stability and wanted to see and improvement in relations.
He was speaking after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Red Sea resort of Sharm Al Shaikh.
Syria said yesterday it would not let a UN murder inquiry question President Bashar Al Assad about the death of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri.
Information Minister Mahdi Dakhl Allah said Damascus had not ruled out any meeting between Bashar and the investigators.
"There is a difference between a questioning and an audience. The president receives visitors from Syria and outside Syria," he said.
In an earlier interview, Dakhl Allah was asked if Syria rejected a presidential meeting with the UN team. "Certainly, because the issue is related to Syria's sovereignty ... this is a red line that cannot be crossed," he told Egyptian radio. He said Syria would still cooperate with the UN inquiry into Hariri's assassination in a Beirut bomb blast on Feb. 14.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened on Wednesday to send the Hariri inquiry back to the Security Council if Syrian "obstruction" continued.
The UN Security Council has threatened Syria with "further action" if it does not cooperate fully with the investigators, who asked last month to interview Assad, his foreign minister, Farouk Al Shar'a, and other officials.
Diplomats say Syria has indicated it will let Shar'a meet the UN team. He will not be among four Syrians that sources close to the inquiry said would be questioned in Vienna next week.
Former Syrian vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam has accused Bashar of ordering Hariri's killing. The inquiry has implicated Syrian officials and pro-Syrian Lebanese security chiefs.
Syria has denied any role in the blast that killed Hariri and 22 others on Beirut's seafront.
Asked if he thought Bashar was directly responsible for Hariri's assassination, Khaddam, now based in Paris, told Britain's Sky Television: "In my belief, yes, my personal belief is that he ordered it. But at the end of the day there is an investigation. They must give the final decision."
Lebanese Druze leader Walid Junblatt also said he suspected Bashar was involved and that his refusal to be questioned suggested he was shunting the blame onto his security apparatus.
"It is like he is trying to say he has nothing to do with it and that he does not control his security agencies," Junblatt said. "I never thought Bashar Al Assad was innocent."
Asked about his remarks to Egyptian radio, Dakhl Allah said it was a misinterpretation to say that Assad refused to meet the inquiry team and suggested that he was willing to receive a visit so long as it did not represent a breach of sovereignty.
Brammertz to take up post next week
The new chief of the UN probe into former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri's murder, Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz, is to take up his post in Beirut next week, his team said yesterday.
"We are expecting Brammertz next week in Beirut," where the investigative commission is based, spokeswoman Nasrat Hassan said. "But we don't yet know the exact day of his arrival."
UN chief Kofi Annan named Brammertz, 43, currently a deputy prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, on Wednesday to replace German investigator Detlev Mehlis as head of the inquiry.
Last month, the UN Security Council passed a resolution endorsing a six-month extension of the Hariri murder probe and renewing its call for Syria's full cooperation with the investigation. In Damascus, the Syrian information minister said yesterday his country would "cooperate fully with the international commission so long as the cooperation is based on known judicial rules and respect of Syria's sovereignty".
