UN Team in Syria to See Assad Over Hariri Killing 
By Reuters
April 25, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-syria-lebanon-brammertz.html

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - The chief U.N. investigator arrived in Syria on Tuesday to interview President Bashar al-Assad over the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Syrian political sources and diplomats said.
``Serge Brammertz and his team are due to meet President Assad and Vice President Farouk al-Shara today,'' a source in the ruling Baath Party said.
Brammertz is in charge of a United Nations investigation into the murder of Hariri and 22 others in a truck bombing in Beirut in February 2005.
It will be the first meeting between U.N. investigators and the Syrian leader since the inquiry opened in June last year.
A Western diplomat said Brammertz was expected to leave Damascus later on Tuesday after meeting Assad and Shara, who was foreign minister when Hariri was assassinated.
``The deal was only for one meeting with each,'' he said.
Syria has been in economic and political uncertainty since a U.N. report issued by Brammertz's predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, last year implicated senior Syrian security officials in Hariri's killing and said Syria was impeding the inquiry.
Syria denied involvement. A follow-up report by Brammertz in March said groundwork had been laid for better cooperation with Damascus. It did not clear the Syrian authorities.
Assad, who has looked relaxed in recent television appearances, has said that any Syrian official found to have been involved in the murder would be tried by the Syrian legal system for treason.
Anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians say that under Syria's strictly top-down system of security and government, there could not have been Syrian involvement in the killing without Assad's knowledge. 
SINISTER IMAGE
Ibrahim al-Daraji, a law professor at Damascus University, said the meeting with Brammertz would help dispel a sinister image of the Syria regime planted by its enemies.
``The fact that Brammertz is here shows that Syria has no problem in seeking the truth about the Hariri killing and cooperating with the inquiry,'' Daraji told Reuters.
``The technical and political standards governing the interviews remain a secret, but it is understood that Syrian sovereignty will be respected,'' he said.
Daraji said Assad was expected to vehemently deny that he threatened Hariri during a meeting on August 26, 2004 in Damascus that discussed the extension of the term for Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.
``The president said publicly this was not true. It is simply not in his nature to threaten anyone,'' Daraji said.
Abdel-Halim Khaddam, a former vice president who defected to Paris last year, has accused Assad of threatening Hariri and involvement in his murder. Before his defection, Khaddam was a pillar of the political system.
Hariri's killing sparked anti-Syrian protests in Beirut and raised international pressure on Damascus that eventually forced it to pull its troops out of Lebanon after 29 years.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is seeking to establish an international tribunal that would probably be based outside Lebanon to try suspects in the killing.
Four senior Lebanese security officials, who were close to Syria, were removed from their positions and detained last year in connection with the murder.