Letting Down Lebanon 
December 19, 2005
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/opinion/19mon2.html

Syria is getting away with murder in Lebanon, and the United Nations Security Council is letting it happen. The resolution the Council passed last Thursday might have been minimally adequate if something less were at stake than the sovereignty of a United Nations member country and the lives of some of its best and most courageous people. 
The resolution extended the U.N. investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, for another six months and promised unspecified international technical help to Lebanese authorities to prosecute this and other recent terrorist killings. But it declined to expand the U.N.'s own investigation to include these new crimes, and, most crucially, it failed to impose serious penalties on Syrian officials who continue to obstruct a thorough investigation. 
Some Council members, including the United States, would have liked to do more to honor the urgent requests for help delivered last week by Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora. But they ran into a wall of apologetics erected mainly by Russia, China and Algeria. 
Since the Council can take credible action only on the basis of broad consensus, Washington and its like-minded partners - Britain, France and Denmark - had to accept a watered-down resolution as the best that could be achieved at this time. But this necessary compromise will do little to convince Damascus or anyone else that the international community is capable of taking effective action against a regime that exports terrorism and tramples with impunity on a neighboring country's sovereignty.
Mr. Hariri, a three-term prime minister, was one of Lebanon's most respected and independent-minded leaders and a symbol of resistance to Syrian occupation and interference. The revulsion over his murder in February, and its almost universally suspected Syrian authorship, finally forced an end to Syria's quarter-century-long military occupation of Lebanon. 
In October, an initial report by U.N. investigators confirmed that important elements of the Syrian government appeared to be deeply involved in planning and organizing the Hariri murder. The Security Council then warned Damascus of further action to follow unless it started providing full cooperation to international investigators.
Yet in the intervening two months, the will to impose consequences on Syria seems to have all but evaporated. Despite a follow-up report last week noting several important areas where Syria has withheld its cooperation, no serious consequences will result any time soon. That failure to follow through comes despite further political murders, including last Monday's car bomb assassination of a publisher known for his criticism of Syria, that have fed suspicions that Syria is continuing to employ terrorism to try and impose its will on Lebanon. As if that weren't disheartening enough, the tough-minded German prosecutor who led the U.N.'s investigation is going home with no successor yet named.
Syria's deadly meddling in Lebanon presented an ideal opportunity for the Security Council to show it was capable of taking effective diplomatic steps to defend vulnerable member states and punish brazen international terrorism. It is too bad that Russia, China and Algeria failed to recognize the fundamental issues at stake.