JERUSALEM, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has called on Syria to cooperate with the United Nations in its inquiry into the alleged assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference in Jerusalem Wednesday.
Lavrov, visiting Israel as part of a Middle East tour, said he expected the UN Security Council to make a similar appeal to Syria after considering the interim report submitted last Thursday by an international panel of investigators led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.
Mikhail Kamynin, the Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesman who is accompanying Lavrov on his current tour, said Wednesday that Russia would try to stop the UN Security Council from imposing sanctions on Syria for not cooperating on the Hariri probe. He said Lavrov would attend the council's October 31 session, where a draft resolution on Syria is to be discussed.
The UN's panel of investigators, whose mandate has now been extended through December 15, concluded that the February 14 car bomb blast in the Lebanese capital of Beirut that killed Hariri and 20 others had been carefully orchestrated, and had received substantial funding. It called Hariri's killing politically motivated, and said high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese officials may have been involved.
Damascus denied any complicity in Hariri's murder.
