Unraveling Syria's Cover-Up 
January 5, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/opinion/05thu4.html

Bashar al-Assad faces a moment of truth that he has worked hard to evade. The Syrian dictator has been asked to meet with a United Nations team investigating last February's truck-bomb murder of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. If Mr. Assad stonewalls or refuses to meet with the team, even those Security Council members who have shielded Syria - like Russia, China and Algeria - will find it hard to claim that Damascus is cooperating enough to avoid imposing tough sanctions. 
The heat is rising on Mr. Assad from other quarters as well. Last week, Al Arabiya television broadcast an interview with his former vice president, Abdel-Halim Khaddam, long the ultimate Damascus insider on Lebanon. For two decades, until his forced resignation last June, Mr. Khaddam planned Syria's Lebanon policies for Mr. Assad and his father. In the interview, Mr. Khaddam reported that Bashar al-Assad had personally threatened Mr. Hariri less than six months before the assassination, and noted that approval for such a blatant act of political terrorism could have come only from the highest levels of the Syrian regime. 
United Nations investigators also plan to talk with Mr. Khaddam, whose remarks touched off a choreographed outburst of denunciations and threats from the shrinking circle of Assad loyalists in Damascus. Those menaces cannot be taken lightly. Last October, Ghazi Kanaan, the former Syrian interior minister who carried out many of Mr. Khaddam's policies in Lebanon, committed suicide under unexplained circumstances shortly after discussing the Hariri case with U. N. investigators.
Syria's efforts to thwart this inquiry are not only shielding Mr. Hariri's killers from justice, but are also making it impossible for Lebanon's people to regain full control of their country after decades of stifling foreign military occupation. Firm pressure from the Security Council helped get Syrian troops withdrawn last year. More pressure will be needed to finally end Syria's deadly meddling in Lebanese affairs.