US leads call for action over Syria

The US led calls on Friday for action against Syria after a UN investigator implicated top Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

The report by UN investigator Detlev Mehlis is to be discussed by the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday when possible new moves could be discussed.

US George W. Bush called the report "deeply disturbing" and said that the US would seek a meeting of the UN Security Council "as quickly as possible to deal with this very serious matter."

US of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said: "This is a very serious matter -- that you have Syrian involvement in the assassination of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri."

"There will have to be some way to ensure accountability for what has already been found here," she said in a joint press conference with UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Birmingham, Alabama.

The chief US diplomat also noted that the report shows "clear indications that the Syrian government had not been cooperating" with the investigation into the Beirut bomb blast in February that killed Hariri and 20 other people.

Straw, on a tour of Rice's southern home state, said that the UK fully backed the US position on the report's findings.

The Mehlis report cited "converging evidence" of Syrian and Lebanese involvement and accused Damascus of blocking and misleading the investigation.

Meanwhile, the son and political heir of the slain former Lebanese prime minister yesterday praised the UN probe and called for an international tribunal to try the alleged killers.

"The hour of truth has come. The blood of the martyr Rafik Hariri and his colleagues in the march toward freedom, dignity, sovereignty will not have been shed in vain," Legislator Saad Hariri said.

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Questions remain about Hariri killing