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UN to establish tribunal into Hariri assassination

The UN Security Council voted to unilaterally establish an international tribunal to prosecute suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, sending a message that there will be no impunity for political murders.

The slain leader's supporters danced in the streets on Wednesday and his son, Saad Hariri, holding back tears, said the resolution was a turning point in Lebanon that would protect the country from further assassinations. He called it a "victory the world has given to oppressed Lebanon and a victory for an oppressed Lebanon in the world."

The vote on the resolution was 10-0 with five abstentions -- Russia, China, South Africa, Indonesia and Qatar.

The five countries that abstained objected to establishing the tribunal without approval of Lebanon's parliament and to putting the resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which deals with threats to international peace and allows militarily enforcement. But none opposed the tribunal itself.

As Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said, Moscow "has been consistently advocating" that Hariri's killers "need to be brought to justice." But "given the deep rift in Lebanese society ... that should not lead to negative consequences," he said.

The resolution, Churkin said, "essentially is an encroachment upon the sovereignty of Lebanon."

China's UN Ambassador Wang Guangya (王光亞) said: "We are all united in doing justice to those who have committed political assassination in Lebanon."

But he warned that only a tribunal supported by all Lebanese factions can be effective.

The council's move "will give rise to a series of political and legal problems, likely to add to the uncertainties embedded in the already turbulent political and security and situation in Lebanon," Wang said.

A massive suicide truck bomb in Beirut killed Hariri and 22 others in February 2005.
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