If anything, this highlights the need for American accountability in Iraq.
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Accountability for Syria
Saturday, October 22, 2005; A20
THE BUSH administration rightly reacted quickly to a report by the
United Nations that compellingly links the Syrian government to the
assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. President
Bush said yesterday the U.N. Security Council should convene "as quickly
as possible" to respond to the investigation; the United States and
France are reportedly discussing two resolutions that would demand
accountability from the government of Bashar Assad.
The United States has plenty of reasons of its own to bring pressure on
Mr. Assad, including his support for foreign terrorists and Sunni
insurgents in Iraq. But the detailed report compiled by the U.N.
commission clearly justifies -- indeed, makes urgent -- Security Council
action. Citing multiple witnesses, documents and recordings of
conversations, the investigation details both Syria's dispute with Mr.
Hariri and the likely involvement of a number of senior officials in
plotting his murder. It also reports the systematic stonewalling of the
probe by the Syrian government.
By insisting on full Syrian cooperation with the ongoing investigation,
the Security Council has a rare opportunity to enforce consequences for
a state-sponsored act of political murder. The Middle East has been
poisoned by such acts for decades, yet almost never have the killers and
their sponsors been identified and brought to justice. No regime merits
such action more than the government of Mr. Assad, who since the fall of
Saddam Hussein has stood out as the most conspicuous sponsor of
terrorism in the Middle East. In addition to brazen meddling in Iraq and
in Lebanon, where bombings and assassinations linked to Damascus have
continued in the months after Mr. Hariri's Feb. 14 slaying, Mr. Assad is
a prime sponsor of terrorism against Israel.
Another U.N. report next week is expected to link his government to the
support of Hezbollah and infiltration of weapons and extremists into
Palestinian refugee camps in Leba non.
Some apologists have argued that Mr. Assad, who succeeded his father as
Syria's dictator in 2000, is the victim of hard-liners in his
government. The U.N. investigation showed otherwise. Chief investigator
Detlev Mehlis of Germany compiled multiple accounts of a meeting on Aug.
26, 2004, between Mr. Assad and Mr. Hariri, in which Mr. Assad
threatened to "break Lebanon over your head" if the prime minister did
not go along with the illegal extension of the mandate of the Lebanese
president, a Syrian puppet. Another Syrian witness told the
investigation that the decision to murder Mr. Hariri was made at a later
meeting attended by Mr. Assad's brother, Maher Assad, and his
brother-in-law, Major Gen. Asef Shawkat.
Also directly implicated is Gen. Rustum Ghazali, Syria's most recent
intelligence chief in Lebanon, and its former ambassador in Washington,
Walid Mouallem. Mr. Mehlis has compromising tape recordings of both of
them, including a meeting in which Mr. Mouallem warned Mr. Hariri, two
weeks before his death, that "we and the [security] services here have
put you into a corner." Intriguingly, one senior official not implicated
in the murder plot is Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, who was found in
his office last week, dead of a gunshot wound, in what officials said
was a suicide.
The Security Council has a good precedent to follow here. When Western
investigators linked the Libyan government to the 1988 bombing of a Pan
Am airliner over Scotland, the United Nations applied sanctions to the
regime of Moammar Gaddafi and kept them in place until his government
accepted responsibility for the crime and surrendered two of its authors
for trial. The United Nations should demand no less in this case. The
Syrian sponsors of Mr. Hariri's murder must be identified and brought to
justice; if that includes Mr. Assad and his relatives, so be it.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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