Lahoud's Regime is Trying to Stop Heads from Rolling in New U.N. Probe

The Lebanese government is trying through Russia and Algeria to curtail the powers of the projected International Commission of Inquiry that will be dispatched to Beirut to conduct a new investigation into ex-Premier Hariri's assassination, An Nahar reported Friday. The move seems designed to absolve the Syrian-backed regime of President Lahoud from guilt and to make sure the heads of Lebanon's senior-most security commands would not roll as a result of the coming probe. The effort is being exerted by Butros Assaker, head of the international affairs department of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, who was recently dispatched to New York for the Security Council deliberations on the new probe after the U.N. faulted a local investigation into the Feb. 14 murder by local authorities in Beirut. Assaker is prodding the Russian and Algerian ambassadors to introduce amendments to a newly tabled French draft bill to form the new investigation mission, which is supported by the United States and Britain, An Nahar said, quoting Arab diplomatic sources. The Lebanese amendments focus on omitting the word "independent" from the title of the projected commission and the reference to the heads of Lebanese security services accused of bungling the local probe so they would not be prosecuted by the commission, An Nahar reported. Another hoped-for amendment is the omission of the word "all" from the article that defines the commission's powers to interrogate anyone it wants in connection with the new probe, which is designed to curtail those powers, according to An Nahar's report. Lebanon's U.N. mission is also trying to confine the period of the new investigation to one year rather than leaving it open-ended, and to change the clause that suggests the commission should submit a report to the Security Council on the progress of the probe every two months, making it once a year, or effectively only one report. Assaker's amendments also include changing the clause that stipulates for 'helping the Lebanese people to know the truth' into 'helping the Lebanese government,' according to An Nahar. The Security Council had to delay a vote on the French draft until early next week because of the rotational change of its president on April 1.