Lebanon’s pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud faced renewed calls to resign on Friday after a United Nations report implicated Syrian and Lebanese security services in the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Lahoud’s office was also forced to deny claims in the report that he received a phone call from a suspect just minutes before the February bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 other people and plunged the country into turmoil unseen since the civil war.
”President Lahoud will continue to fulfil his duties in line with the Constitution,” said a statement from his office, describing the phone-call claims as ”without any foundation”.
”These allegations are aimed at tarnishing the Presidency.”
The UN commission’s much-awaited report into Hariri’s assassination cited ”converging evidence” of Syrian and Lebanese involvement and accused Damascus of blocking and misleading the investigation.
”There is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate … could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organised without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services,” the report said.
The killing triggered an international outcry and led many in Lebanon to point the finger at Syria, hastening Damascus’s departure from its smaller neighbour in April after a 29-year military presence.
”It is a damning report for President Lahoud and his top aides. He must accept the consequences and resign,” said MP Elias Atallah, who is allied to the movement headed by Hariri’s son Saad that commands a parliamentary majority.
”It is a solid foundation on which to pursue the inquiry and uncover the truth,” added Minister of Education Khaled Qabbani.
Damascus has denied any involvement in Hariri’s killing, and on Friday dismissed the report as ”politically biased”.
Lahoud has been under mounting pressure to stand down following the Hariri killing, with four high-ranking security officials with close ties to Syria — including the head of his presidential guard — in custody over the murder.
The report said a figure in the investigation, Mahmud Abdel-Al, made a call to Lahoud’s cellphone ”minutes before the blast”.
The mandate of Lahoud, a Maronite Christian, was controversially extended for three years in September last year under a Syrian-inspired constitutional amendment, a move that triggered Hariri’s resignation the following month.
Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun, who returned to Lebanon following the departure of Syrian troops, after years in exile in Paris, said Lahoud should not resign under pressure from the street.
”This issue is not one for the street but must be the subject of dialogue and political consensus to make sure the situation does not degenerate and put the country’s stability at risk,” he told Lebanese television.
The report, the result of a four-month-long probe into the bomb blast that killed Hariri, was delivered to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan by chief investigator Detlev Mehlis on Thursday.
About 10 000 Lebanese army and police forces are deployed in the streets as part of what officials called an ”undeclared state of emergency” following a dozen bomb attacks in the capital since Hariri’s murder.
Most of them have targeted prominent anti-Syrian figures. — AFP
