Washington – President Bush on Friday said the U.N. should deal quickly and seriously with a report implicating Syria in the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, a killing that led to protests and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon after nearly 30 years as overlord.
“The report strongly suggests that the politically motivated assassination could not have taken place without Syrian involvement,” Bush said.
In Damascus, Syrian leaders dismissed the findings, and the government of President Bashar Assad prepared to fight growing Western sentiment to punish it with economic sanctions.
Imad Moustapha, Syrian ambassador to the United States, said the report was baseless and the Bush administration was motivated by Syria’s opposition to the war in Iraq.
He said of the report, in Washington, “It will only help fuel anti-American sentiment around the world.”
The report was likely to worsen the divisions between Lebanon’s pro- and anti-Syrian groups. Syria’s opponents in Lebanon welcomed the findings as the long-awaited truth about the assassination and about Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs.
Pro-Syrian politicians vigorously criticized the findings.
The United Nations investigative report, which Bush called “deeply disturbing,” made a link between high-ranking Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies in the car bombing that killed Rafik Hariri and 20 others in February.
The report, issued Thursday to members of the U.N. Security Council, did not implicate Assad directly but said his government did not cooperate with the inquiry.
Bush spoke in California after helping dedicate a new pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
He said he had telephoned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier in the day and instructed her to call on the United Nations to convene a Security Council session “as quickly as possible to deal with this very serious matter.”
Bush was not specific about what steps the international community should take. He said the United States has started talking with U.N. officials and with Arab governments about that.
“Today a serious report came out that requires the world to look at very carefully and respond accordingly,” Bush said.
The United States and France are readying Security Council resolutions critical of Syria.
The Security Council, which can impose political and economic sanctions, was already scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider the report from German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis. The U.S. mission said Friday it had no plans to call for an earlier meeting time.
