Naharnet - Security Council Extends Hariri Murder Probe Mandate, June 3, 2008
The U.N. Security Council has unanimously extended for another six months the mandate of the U.N. commission investigating ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's Feb. 2005 assassination. Resolution 1815, drafted by France, renewed the mandate on Monday until December 31, 2008. But the 15-member body also stated its readiness to terminate the mandate of the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) headed by Daniel Bellemare earlier "if the commission reports that it has completed the implementation of its mandate." The resolution said it took note of a May letter by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora urging the council to back Bellemare's request for a six-month extension of the mandate which expires June 15, 2008. After the adoption, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad, who chairs the council this month, underscored the importance of concluding the investigation. "The Commission has a clear mandate. It is moving forward, it certainly has the support of the Security Council and our support, it's very important that there is accountability for what happened in Lebanon," he told reporters. He stressed that this was "not only important for the sake of Lebanon, but also more broadly because political assassination is an instrument. It's a threat to international peace and security." Last April, Bellemare cautioned against expecting early indictments and urged the Security Council to give his team more time to complete its work. In his first appearance before the council since he took office last January, the Canadian former prosecutor then disclosed that indictments in the case would not be filed immediately after the U.N.-backed tribunal is established. He said the time gap ideally "should be as short as possible" but he insisted that "the admissible evidence will have to be carefully and objectively considered in light of the applicable prosecution threshold." Bellemare succeeded Belgian Serge Brammertz at the head of the probe to uncover who was behind the death of Hariri and 22 others in a massive explosion on the Beirut seafront on February 14, 2005. Brammertz' German predecessor Detlev Mehlis had implicated senior officials from Syria, which for three decades was the power broker in Lebanon. But Damascus has strongly denied any connection with Hariri's death. Bellemare is to become the special tribunal's prosecutor once the U.N. probe of the Hariri and related cases is completed.
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