United Nations Security Council has voted to extend the mandate of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission, probing former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's the assassination.
The UNSC extended the mandate by at least another six months.
Voicing 'extreme concern' that Syria has not yet provided full and unconditional cooperation to the UN inquiry, the 15-member Security Council has unanimously demanded that the Syrian government respond 'unambiguously and immediately' in all necessary areas of the probe.
- Also see: The Hariri assassination in pictures
Council Resolution 1644, following UNIIIC's latest report on new evidence pointing to Syria's involvement in Hariri's murder and Syrian procrastination and efforts to hinder the probe, acknowledged the Lebanese government's request that those eventually charged be tried by a tribunal of an international character.
It requested Secretary-General Kofi Annan to help the Lebanese government to identify the nature and scope of the international assistance needed for this and to report soon to the Security Council.
The Council also requested the Commission to report to it every three months or earlier if it deems that Syrian cooperation does not meet the requirements of this or previous resolutions.
Resolution 1636, adopted in October, held out the possibility of 'further action' in the case of Syrian non-compliance with the Council's call to detain Syrian suspects already identified by UNIIIC and to clarify all unresolved issues.
Hariri's assassination on February 14, in which 22 other people were also killed when his car was blown up, led to renewed calls for the withdrawal of all Syrian troops and intelligence agents who had been in Lebanon since the early stages of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.
In April, the United Nations reported that troops were withdrawn.
In its latest report, UNIIIC said it had 'credible information' that Syrian officials had arrested and threatened close relatives of a witness who recanted testimony he had previously given to the Commission, and that two Syrian suspects it questioned indicated that all Syrian intelligence documents on Lebanon had been burned.
Damascus has vigorously denied involvement.
"We're fully confident that Syria is innocent," UN Envoy Fayssal Mekdad told reporters.
"Syria would never be behind these crimes. This is not our policy," Andrei Denisov, the envoy of Russia, told the council that Moscow had proposed a 'more balanced' amendment, but Paris and Washington declined to delete unnecessary 'negativism' towards Syria.
John R. Bolton, the American envoy, urged Damascus to comply with international resolutions.
"We're making it clear to the government of Syria they can't run, they can't hide. The end game of this exercise is to get to the bottom of the Hariri assassination and to bring to justice anybody - anybody - responsible for it," Bolton told reporters before the Security Council vote.
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