Is Syria cooperating with Mehlis, or Mehlis with Syria? Sami Moubayed poses the question A last-minute decision was reached in Damascus on 25 November to allow five officers in the Syrian Army to be questioned in Vienna by German persecutor Detlev Mehlis, head of the UN team investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri. Syria's decision came hours before Mehlis's deadline came to an end and amid rising speculation that Syria would refuse to cooperate with the UN probe. Earlier last week, Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Shara had requested that Mehlis sign a cooperation protocol with Damascus, to lay grounds for the questioning of Syrian officials. Mehlis rejected the Syrian appeal. Failure to comply with Mehlis's requests for access to the officials would have caused Mehlis to take the matter to the Security Council before his 15 December mandate runs out on grounds of Syria breaching UN Resolution 1636, which calls on the country to cooperate or face consequences of its actions if it does not. Previously, Mehlis had explicitly requested that investigations take place in Lebanon, a suggestion curtly scotched by Syria. Other options included holding interviews of officials at a UN base in the Golan Heights or at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. Many believed that Syria actually did not want investigations held anywhere, but was pushing the issue of location because it knew that Mehlis would say no to anyplace but Lebanon. Mehlis surprised them by saying yes to Vienna, and the Syrians surprised him by accepting. The wise Syrian decision was reached after President Bashar Al-Assad met with the National Command of the Baath Party and the Central Committee of the National Progressive Front (NPF), a parliamentary coalition headed by the Baath. Syria's deputy Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualim and Riyad Al-Dawoudi, legal advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced Syria's readiness to comply at a press conference in Damascus. The two officials refused to name the five Syrian officers who will meet Mehlis, it being important to maintain the "secrecy of the investigations", but speculations and press reports claim that they are Rustom Ghazali, ex-head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, Jamae Jamae, a senior Syrian officer serving in Beirut, Abd Al-Karim Abbas from Syrian military intelligence, Zafer Yusuf, director of informatics in the Syrian intelligence service, and General Bahjat Sulayman, ex- director of internal security in Syria. General Assef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law and director of intelligence, was not on the final list of names requested by Mehlis. Moualim and Dawoudi said that no sixth name was dropped from the list, and in fact, no sixth name ever existed, claiming that talk about six officials being sought out by Mehlis was nothing but press speculation. Moualim said: "Me, I know that the number is five. I don't know where you get the sixth from." Syria's decision to cooperate with Mehlis, described as "courageous and wise" by Moualim, was received with great relief in Damascus. Even US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who has made headlines in recent weeks with his aggressive anti-Syrian rhetoric, said that Syria's decision to cooperate was good, adding: "We hope this Syrian cooperation continues and grows." The Syrians were given assurances that even if Mehlis found any of the officers guilty, he did not have the authority to arrest any of them in Vienna. They would be travelling with their lawyers, Moualim nonetheless pointed out. "Mr Mehlis doesn't have the authority to arrest [them]. He must ask the Lebanese judicial authorities who will then ask Syria," Moualim said. Syrians had been worrying over where their country was heading; concerns President Assad did little to assuage in a speech at Damascus University on 10 November when he said that Syrians preferred to be killed than to kill themselves. He said that there were limits to cooperation and that such limits were reached when the international community makes unjust demands upon Damascus that infringe on its pride and Syrian national security. The value of Syrian currency had dropped dramatically over the past 10 days causing panic as the rate of exchange reached 60 Syrian pounds to one US dollar. The turnaround likely postpones, if not eliminates completely, talk of imposing economic sanctions against Syria for reasons of non-compliance with Mehlis. Moualim noted that Syria's decision to cooperate, "aborts any justification for economic sanctions against Syria." Meanwhile, international media is busy speculating on the nature of the secret deal it imagines has been done between Syria and Mehlis, which led Syria to suddenly comply. Actually, no deal has been made, but Russian diplomacy proved decisive in loosening the slipknot around Syria. President Vladimir Putin personally intervened in the crisis, suggesting that if the UN wants cooperation from Damascus, it should make reasonable demands that Syria can fulfil. Also involved in the diplomatic effort were King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Requesting the presence for questioning of retired officers like Bahjat Sulayman, or relatively junior officers like Jamae Jamae, was one thing, while interrogating the director of Syrian intelligence was another. No country would accept such a request, the Syrians claimed, unless it was backed by already strong evidence against him, which, to date, Mehlis does not have. While Syria can comply, unwillingly, in the case of retirees of juniors, it would be very difficult for it, with no concrete evidence provided upfront from Mehlis, to cooperate where senior and current officers were concerned. In reality, the breakthrough in Damascus on Friday shows that Syria has cooperated with Mehlis and Mehlis has cooperated with Syria. He has backed down on his demand to question the Syrians in Lebanon and, reportedly, crossed off one of the names from the list (although Dawoudi and Moualim deny this). Another possible reason for his U-turn might be pressure from Lebanon. Hizbullah had strongly articulated its continued alliance with Syria by walking out of a cabinet meeting on 10 November, creating tension in the administration of Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora. The cabinet meeting had been called to discuss Assad's speech in Damascus, where he unleashed his anger at Lebanon's press, parliament and prime minister, calling the latter a "slave commanded by a commanded slave", in reference to the Beirut MP Saad Rafik Al-Hariri. Hizbullah's relationship with Siniora had already been strained, although Hizbullah had ministers in the Siniora cabinet, because Siniora had reportedly made a pledge to UN special envoy Terje Roed Larsen to disarm the Shia resistance group. Everybody in Lebanon, however, has been saying that the issue of Hizbullah's arms, left pending from UN Resolution 1559, was a domestic matter that must be dealt with, in order to avoid instability, by the Lebanese themselves with no interference from outside forces; a view echoed by French President Jacques Chirac. In the days that preceded the breakthrough in Syria's stance with Mehlis, serious escalation had been witnessed on the Lebanese-Israeli border, unprecedented since the evacuation of Israel from South Lebanon in May 2000. Clashes took place between Hizbullah and Israel on 21 November in the occupied Sheeba Farms, resulting in the injury of 10 Israelis and the death of three members of Hizbullah. Israel responded by shelling the countryside and violating Lebanese air space, a practice very common in the 1990s. On 23 November, Israeli planes flew over Lebanon, dropping leaflets in Arabic saying "Hizbullah is causing enormous harm to Lebanon," signed by the State of Israel. On Friday 25 November, Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah delivered a fiery speech while his party welcomed to Lebanon the bodies of the three combatants killed by Israel. Undaunted by a UN Security Council statement, released on 24 November, condemning Hizbullah for the violence on the border, he defended the resistance saying: "It is not a shame, a crime, or a terrorist act. It is our right and our duty." He emphasised his party's friendship with both Syria and Iran, claiming that they had freed Lebanon from occupation, calling on all Lebanese to establish a similar friendship with Damascus and Tehran. Nonetheless, he was careful to underline that "Hizbullah's orders do not come from Damascus." He continued: "Since 1982 we have been friends of Syria and until today, do not hide this friendship, nor are we embarrassed from it." The message was clear: Hizbullah is strong, it is angry, and it is firmly allied with Syria. Further pressure on Syria will draw consequences from Hizbullah. Nobody in Lebanon wants that to happen. In order to avoid tension, Mehlis should cooperate with Syria measure for measure, as Syria has to cooperate with Mehlis, Hizbullah seemed to be saying. On 27 November, Saudi King Abdullah gave an interview in Riyadh outlining his personal role in mediating between the Syrians and Mehlis. Excerpts were published in the London daily Al-Hayat and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. King Abdullah said that he had advised the Syrian president to cooperate, repeating that, "The essence [of the problem] is Syria's interests. This is something that has meant a lot to us from the days of King Abdel-Aziz." He added, "Who accepts the insulting of Syria? We do not accept [anybody] insulting Syria!" Mehlis's insistence to interrogate Syrian officials in Lebanon would have been an insult to every Syrian, and every Arab, King Abdullah is quoted as saying. Riyadh decided to push its weight around in favour of the Syrians after Abdullah received three letters requesting Saudi intervention from President Assad. The Saudi monarch sent Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, secretary-general of the National Security Council in Saudi Arabia to Damascus to meet with Assad and they decided on either Switzerland or Austria as acceptable locations. The option of Lebanon requested by Mehlis was crossed off thanks to Saudi Arabia. Next, Prince Bandar went to France where he met both President Jacques Chirac and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who agreed saying that Mehlis was wrong when he insisted on holding interviews in Lebanon. Chirac and Annan supported the Saudi initiative, while diplomacy by Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal convinced ambassadors of the world powers to conduct the interrogations outside of Lebanon. Abdullah added: "We do not like macho behaviour. The era of macho behaviour is over. What we want is an agreement that guarantees the pride of Syria and Lebanon and fulfils the demands of the United Nations. I do not accept that the Syrian people get humiliated by having the interrogation at the United Nations office in Lebanon. And the Lebanese do not want to insult the Syrian people or its government."
