Jumblat Demands U.N. Team Interrogate Ghazaleh as Assassin Suspect

The United Nations has set a committee of experts to investigate ex-Premier Hariri's assassination and Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblat demanded that Syria's military intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Rustom Ghazaleh be a prime suspect for interrogation. U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan is sending a team led by Ireland's deputy police commissioner to Beirut in the next few days to investigate Hariri's assassination, the U.N. spokesman announced Friday. The move came in response to a request from the Security Council that he urgently report on "the circumstances, causes and consequences" of Hariri's killing, the spokesman said in a statement. "The team will make contact with Lebanese officials and others to gather such information as necessary for the secretary-general to the council in a timely manner," the statement said. Peter Fitzgerald, the team leader, has been a deputy Irish police commissioner since 1998 and has worked in U.N. peacekeeping operations in Namibia and Cambodia and was police commissioner in Bosnia until February 1997. He also served as a member of the independent team that investigated security at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad before the Aug. 19 bombing that killed 22 people and injured over 160. The statement said the team going to Beirut "will consist of staff with relevant expertise" but no other names were announced. The Security Council on Tuesday expressed grave concern at the possible impact of Hariri's assassination on the ongoing efforts of the Lebanese people to solidify democracy and stressed that the "terrorist act" must not jeopardize upcoming parliamentary elections. Jumblat said Gen. Ghazaleh must be interrogated because as chief of Syria's military intelligence in Lebanon he could be the main suspected who plotted and executed the massive bombing assassination. Jumblat made the statement Friday night on the sidelines of an opposition declaration of an uprising patterned after the Palestinian Intifada to extract Lebanon from Syria's 28-year-old ruthless tutelage, but by "peaceful and democratic means." Jumblat also scolded President Lahoud for exercising his swimming hobby all through Hariri's funeral procession on Wednesday.(Naharnet-AP)