US,UK urge action against Syria over Hariri murder

BEIRUT, Monday (Reuters) The United States and Britain ratcheted up pressure on Syria saying a U.N. probe implicating it in the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was very serious and the world must act.

Washington is trying to arrange a U.N. Security Council meeting to consider a response to the inquiry that named senior Syrian officials as suspects in the February truck bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was confident of action, but did not specify what action she wanted the council to take.

"When the international community is united, we get the kind of response that we need to deal with serious problems," she told reporters.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, travelling with her in Alabama, said: "There has to be a consensus and this is a report, a set of circumstances, that the international community simply cannot ignore."

The U.N. report found last week the decision to kill Hariri "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranking Syrian security officials" colluding with officials in Lebanon.

It named senior Syrian security officials, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's brother and brother-in-law, and their Lebanese allies, as suspects in the murder that transformed Lebanon's political landscape.Syrian officials have dismissed the report as political and said the charges were false but left the door open for future cooperation with the probe, saying it might agree to allow investigators to return to Damascus to quiz Syrian officials.

Syria's official news agency said Assad had written to Council members explaining Syria's position on the probe.

Straw told the BBC: "The report indicates that people of a high level of this Syrian regime were implicated.""We also have evidence from the ... report of false testimony being given by senior people in the regime. This is very serious."

He said on Friday Council members would consider sanctions, but acknowledged the West had to work to win support from all members for its pressure on Damascus.

The report said the Syrian authorities had cooperated "to a limited degree", but several individuals had tried to mislead investigators "by giving false or inaccurate statements".

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem denied accusations in the report that he had threatened Hariri two weeks before his assassination.

"This is completely untrue. I did not go to Prime Minister Hariri to make threats," he said. "I went to tell him about my mission and ask him to cooperate in order for the mission to succeed," he told Syrian state television, without elaborating.

The report said Moualem lied to investigators when he described a meeting with Hariri on Feb. 1 as "friendly and constructive".

Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a prominent critic of Syria, urged Assad to cooperate with the inquiry and backed a call from Saad al-Hariri, the son of the slain former premier, for an international tribunal to try the suspects.