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Bush calls for UN meeting on Hariri killing
www.chinaview.cn 2005-10-22 05:20:49

    
Bush called a U.N. report that implicates Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri 'deeply disturbing' and urged the United Nations to take up the matter as quickly as possible.
Standing in front of a piece of the Berlin Wall, U.S. President George W. Bush speaks about Syria during a visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, October 21, 2005.(Reuters photo)
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- US President George W. Bush on Friday called for a United Nations meeting as soon as possible to discuss a UN report implicating Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

    The UN report is "deeply disturbing" and it "strongly suggests that the politically motivated assassination could not have taken place without Syrian involvement,'' Bush said in remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.

   "The report points to a conspiracy involving Syria ... It also concludes that there is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials, and could not have been organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services," State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said at a briefing.

    The UN report, released on Thursday evening, linked Syria with the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and called on the Syrian authorities to cooperate with investigators.

    "There is converging evidence pointing at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in this terrorist act," said the report, referring to the Feb. 14 deadly bomb attack in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, which killed Hariri and 20 others.

    
Syria hotly dismissed on Friday a U.N. report that linked embattled President Bashar Assad's government in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, as Damascus geared up to fight off growing Western sentiment to punish it with crippling economic sanctions. A portrait of Assad and a Syrian flag are seen in the background.
Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha responds to a U.N. report on Friday, Oct. 21, 2005 at the Syrian Embassy in Washington.(AP photo)  

    Syria has denied it has any links to the killing of Hariri. Enditem

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