UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. report released Thursday on the assassination of Rafik Hariri says that Syria bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded the attack and that the president of Syria had threatened the former Lebanese prime minister.
The report did not assign blame for the Feb. 14 bomb attack that killed Hariri and 19 others, but it dramatically increased pressure on Syria to remove its troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon. It also called for an international investigation.
The fact-finding mission, led by Irish Deputy Police Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, criticized a Lebanese government investigation as "seriously flawed" and recommended that the leaders of its security services leave office to allow a more credible inquiry.
Lebanese investigators removed evidence from the scene, including damaged cars, and brought other vehicle parts to the site days after the assassination, moves the report termed "gross negligence" verging on criminal action.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud urged U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to do whatever was necessary to uncover the truth behind the Hariri assassination, signaling that Beirut would accept an international inquiry.
On Wednesday, the Lebanese judge who was overseeing the investigation of Hariri's death abruptly stepped down, saying he was too busy to continue the work. "I am tired, it's enough," Michel Abu Arraj told the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper. "I submitted my resignation and that is that."
The United Nations report examined Hariri's growing discontent with Syria's influence in Lebanon and the spiraling power struggle that led to his death.
Hariri had clashed for months with Lahoud over a possible amendment to the constitution allowing the pro-Syria president to serve three more years.
The report quoted Hariri's aides and friends as saying that Syrian President Bashar Assad had told him in a meeting in Damascus, the Syrian capital, last summer that opposing Lahoud was tantamount to opposing the Syrian leader.
Assad also told Hariri that he "would rather break Lebanon over the heads of Hariri and [Druze leader Walid] Jumblatt than see his world in Lebanon broken," the report said.
There is no Syrian account of the meeting, but the report said that the accounts from Hariri's confidants were so similar as to almost be verbatim. Hariri told them he even thought of leaving the country.
