DAMASCUS, Oct. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara on Thursday blamed some unjust media reports for Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan's suicide.

    In a statement to reporters at the funeral of Kanaan, Shara expressed hope that the media could learn from this bitter experience and maintain credibility and objectivity.

    Shara also expressed his dissatisfaction of some information leaked from a UN investigation team into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

    Kanaan was believed to be among senior Syrian officials inquired last month by Detlev Mehlis, chief UN investigator.

    He said Mehlis has earlier promised to deny all that was not done in his meeting with Syrian officials and therefore Syria was waiting for Mehlis' reply to allegations of the Lebanese media made on the eve of Kanaan's death.

    An ambulance adorned with flowers took Kanaan's body from the private Shami hospital in central Damascus to his birthplace of Bhamra in northern Syria, where he will be buried later on Thursday.

    Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Ottri and other senior military and security officials were present at the hospital to pay their last respects before the body left.

    Damascus chief public prosecutor Mohammed Marwan al-Luwaji confirmed earlier in the day that Kanaan shot himself in the mouth with his own gun at his office on Wednesday.

    Hours before his death, Kanaan interviewed with a Lebanese radio station by phone, denying reports by Lebanese media that he showed UN investigators cheques paid to him by Hariri who was killed in a powerful car bomb blast in Beirut on Feb. 14.Kanaan, Syria's former military intelligence chief in Lebanon for two decades from 1982 to 2002, was appointed interior minister last October in a cabinet reshuffle.

    Kanaan died three weeks after the secret inquiry and days before the release of a UN report on it.

    Earlier this year, the US treasury announced a freeze on Kanaan's assets.

    Last month, the Lebanese Central Bank opened up accounts of Kanaan to UN investigators.

    Kanaan was born in 1942 in the northwestern coastal city of Latakia and had four sons and two daughters. Enditem