SYRIA has promised to allow United Nations prosecutors investigating the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, to question its senior officials.

The move is an attempt to disprove claims that Damascus was behind the killing.

Yahya al-Aridi, a spokesman for Syria’s information ministry, said Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor heading the UN team, had been told during a preliminary meeting in Damascus on Monday that he could expect full co-operation.

London-based Aridi said: “Mehlis was told he can see anyone he wants at any time he requires and he can ask whatever questions he has in mind.” This could even include a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, although it would be an “audience” rather than questioning, he said.

Mehlis, who is expected to hand his report on the assassination to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, on October 25, described the Syrians he wants to question as witnesses rather than suspects.

Aridi said Mehlis had not yet handed over the list. Reports circulating in Beirut, however, suggested the former heads of Syria’s recently dismantled intelligence apparatus in Lebanon would be on it.

It has also been reported that Mehlis, who is expected back in Damascus this week, may question Assad’s brother, Maher, the head of the presidential guards, and their brother-in-law, Brigadier General Asef Shawkat, the head of Syria’s intelligence services.

Assad’s absence from last week’s UN summit in New York prompted speculation in the American press that he had stayed away because the investigators’ net was closing around his regime. However, Syrian officials said he had stayed away rather than find himself shunned by western leaders.

The United States, which accuses Syria of aiding Iraqi insurgents and radical Palestinian groups, is convinced that Syrian officials will be implicated in the death of Hariri, who was assassinated in a bombing in Beirut in February.

Syrian officials deny involvement, insisting that they are the victims of an American-Israeli smear.

“I can tell you categorically that no one in Syria would dare or manage to be involved in an incident of such magnitude without the president getting to know about it,” Aridi said.

Syria believed America’s drive against Assad was punishment “for describing the US invasion of Iraq as an occupation and for being against the war in the first place”, he added.

Aridi also rejected suggestions that Syria was not doing enough to prevent Arab fighters from infiltrating Iraq, saying Washington had failed to provide radar and night-vision equipment to help stop them.

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