US rejects Hezbollah intimidation on Hariri tribunal

BEIRUT (Reuters)
The United States on Friday vowed support for a U.N.-backed probe into the murder of Lebanon’s
former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, accusing Hezbollah of “intimidation” in urging a boycott. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday warned all Lebanese not to help investigators probing the 2005 killing, saying that such cooperation would be tantamount to an attack on the Shiite movement, in the latest escalation in a war of words over the inquiry which threatens to plunge the country into more turmoil.

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon will continue to rely on the full cooperation of the Lebanese government and the international community, according to its statute

a spokesperson for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon

“Nasrallah’s remarks are an indication of how Hezbollah does not have the interest of all the Lebanese people in mind,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.

“It has a narrow agenda and we will do everything that we can to help the Lebanese government and Lebanese people resist this obvious intimidation,” he said.

The U.N. tribunal earlier said that the call by Hezbollah to boycott the investigation is an “attempt to obstruct justice.”

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, stepped up its campaign against the tribunal after reports emerged in recent months that the court’s prosecutor may indict members of the group, possibly early next year.

“Any call to boycott the tribunal is an attempt to obstruct justice,” a spokesperson for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon told Reuters.

“The Special Tribunal for Lebanon will continue to rely on the full cooperation of the Lebanese government and the international community, according to its statute.”

“Scandalous”

Nasrallah spoke out after two international investigators were forced by a crowd of women to leave a doctor’s clinic in southern Beirut, a bastion of Hezbollah, where they had made an appointment to review files.

The tribunal condemned what it called an “attack on its staff” and it would not be deterred from its investigation.

Hezbollah, part of a fragile national unity government, has been trying to pressure Sunni Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, Rafik’s son, into repudiating the tribunal, which the group considers a tool of U.S. and Israeli policy.

Nasrallah said it was scandalous that investigators had sought the medical files of women at the clinic, and warned that any further cooperation with the tribunal would be considered “an aggression against the resistance (Hezbollah).”

The U.N. Security Council set up the tribunal in May 2007 and it has yet to indict anyone in Hariri’s assassination.

U.N. investigators had first implicated senior Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials. But last year four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals who had been arrested by Lebanese authorities at the investigators’ behest were released without charge after the tribunal decided they had no part in the killing.

Syria and Hezbollah have both denied any involvement in Hariri’s assassination.