Can President Bashar Al-Assad cope with the challenge put forward by investigator Mehlis, asks Mohamed Sid-Ahmed Security Council Resolution 1636 is placing President Bashar Al-Assad in an unenviable position. It calls on Syria to cooperate fully with the enquiry of UN investigator Detlev Mehlis, at a time many of the top officials required to assist the German judge are themselves under investigation for complicity in Rafik Al-Hariri murder. According to well-informed sources, some 14 high ranking officers and prominent political figures stand accused of involvement in the assassination plot. Mehlis has asked that Syrian officials be interviewed outside Syria, a request that is unlikely to be met, while a spokesman for UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan confirmed that an international tribunal will be set up to try the suspects, but did not specify either the venue or the constitution of the court. The spokesman, Ibrahim Al-Gaabari, called on all nations to cooperate with the UN investigation team in the aim of revealing the truth and warned that if Syria did not cooperate the Security Council would take the appropriate measures. As to the senior officials and political figures on Mehlis's list, they include Syrian Vice- President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa, his assistant Walid Al-Moallem, President Al-Assad's brother-in-law General Assef Shawkat, who heads Syria's military intelligence, the former head of Syrian forces in Lebanon Colonel Rostom Ghazaly and, perhaps most disturbingly, Bashar's brother Maher, who serves as commander of the Republican Guard. In other words, the entire Syrian regime is to be put on trial, even if Mehlis stopped short of naming the Syrian president himself. How likely is it that any of these men would agree to leave Syria or, for that matter, what guarantee do they have that cooperating with Mehlis is in their best interests? How can they be sure that they will not be drawn into an irreversible mechanism and deprived of their freedom of movement? In short, how can they be sure the entire "cooperation" scenario is not just a trap? And even if it is not intended to be, does it not deprive the Syrian side of the means to safeguard its national sovereignty? Although Mehlis admits in his report that the investigation is not complete, leading UN Secretary-General Annan to extend the deadline for the enquiry to 15 December, he states that "converging evidence" points to the involvement of high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese officials. The clear implication is that the names he cites are the result of an exhaustive enquiry whose credibility is undeniable, at least as far as international public opinion is concerned. But the officials mentioned in the report can claim they were only following orders and that they were not acting in their political capacity. If they do, a political solution of the crisis is exposed to the threat of being excluded a priori. If Syria hopes to cut a political deal, it would have to do a number of things in addition to handing over the officials wanted for questioning in connection with Al-Hariri's assassination. It would have to end its support for the Iraqi insurgency, end its presence in Lebanon and cut its ties to Hizbullah and other Palestinian militant groups. Syria could avert a showdown by taking a leaf out of Muammar Gaddafi's book. The Libyan leader managed to avoid Saddam Hussein's fate with a number of initiatives designed to placate the West and succeeded, up to a point, in achieving a degree of reconciliation with Western capitals. There is no doubt that Bush's war against Iraq had a profound effect on Gaddafi. It made him understand that the present world order is radically different from the previous Cold War setup based on a balance of power between two world poles capable of exterminating the human species altogether, not once but several times over. Today the world system is built on asymmetry. The world has to survive with asymmetry prevailing structurally and to keep its equilibrium despite this structural asymmetry. This is no easy task. But nor is it an impossible one. That is the real challenge of the future. The more immediate challenge is to ensure that the international investigation into Al-Hariri's assassination proceeds smoothly and rapidly and that the 15 December deadline will not mark the onset of yet more turmoil in the Middle East.
