August 13, 2010 - Daily Star - Hariri to address debate about STL during iftar on Saturday

Ambiguity looms over whether Hizbullah will cooperate with tribunal
By Elias Sakr

BEIRUT: Premier Saad Hariri is to tackle on Saturday the ongoing debate over the UN investigation into his father’s assassination, while ambiguity still surrounds the question of whether Hizbullah will cooperate with the UN-backed tribunal.

On Monday, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah unveiled information he said implicated Israel in the murder, but Hizbullah officials made no comments as of Thursday in response to a demand by the tribunal’s general prosecutor to submit the information for investigation.

On Wednesday, Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) General Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare requested that Lebanese Prosecutor Saeed Mirza submit to the STL the information that Nasrallah presented.

Commenting on Hariri’s silence amid the heated debate over the STL, Future Movement MP Ammar Houri said the premier would address the issue through the media during an iftar which is to be held at the premier’s residence in Qoreitem following his return from a vacation in Sardinia.

Houri called on Hizbullah to submit information it held for investigation by the STL after Bellemare welcomed Wednesday “any information that could help us reach the truth.”

During Monday’s news conference, Nasrallah said his party wouldn’t present the evidence to the STL, since he had “no trust” in the body, but added that if the STL ignored the information, it would prove to be politicized.

“The logic says that the STL is the international party that is entitled to probe presumptions and proof, and the prosecutor should lay his hands on the file, an issue that he demanded last night and delegated to … Mirza to do,” Houri said. “Thus, Hizbullah is required in turn to submit all data it possesses on the issue,” Houri added.

On Monday, Nasrallah screened video clips of alleged Israeli drone surveillance footage intercepted by Hizbullah that showed routes former Premier Rafik Hariri used to travel, including the area where he was killed on February 14, 2005.

Liberation and Development bloc MP Michel Moussa, a close ally of Hizbullah and member of Speaker Nabih Berri’s Development and Liberation parliamentary bloc, said he expected Hizbullah to cooperate with Bellemare’s demand.

Moussa added that “the demand by … Bellemare for information presented by … Nasrallah is part of the UN probe’s work.”

Hizbullah, which earlier accused the STL of being an “Israeli project,” continued to doubt the court’s credibility and stress the need for the prosecution of false witnesses who misled earlier probes that implicated Lebanese security officials and Syria in the murder.

Earlier, Nasrallah said his party would reject any impending indictment against Hizbullah members, saying Western media and Israeli officials have been circulating reports lately in an attempt to target the resistance in Lebanon and the region.

“No one is denying the Israeli enemy wants to target the Lebanese domestic scene by all means, particularly that Israel is an enemy state which hopes to target all Lebanese figures,” Future Movement MP Hadi Hobeish said.

Hobeish stressed the need for the STL to conduct serious investigations concerning Israeli spies operating in Lebanon, as he called on Nasrallah to present his information to Bellemare for serious investigation.

“Today, we are tackling the investigations and we did not dismiss in the past period that Israel could be responsible for the assassinations that took place,” Hobeish said.

Houri also denied media reports quoting Hariri as saying that if Israel refuses to cooperate with the UN probe then the premier would consider Israel responsible his father’s murder.

As-Safir newspaper reported in remarks published Thursday that Hariri had informed figures close to him that Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the STL would “turn the latter from a suspect into a convict.”

“Our official stance is the one we announced in the Future Movement bloc’s statement following our Tuesday meeting,” Houri told The Daily Star, commenting on the As-Safir report.

The Future Movement said Tuesday that the STL was the party authorized to investigate the murder and seek evidence that would uncover assailants.

The statement added that it welcomed all information or evidence that could lead to the identifying the perpetrators of the murder and stressed the need to “exploit all assumptions and possibilities of the side standing behind the murder.”