UNITED NATIONS - Syria on Thursday blamed a Security Council resolution last year demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon for the tensions that preceded the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Syria's UN ambassador Fayssal Mekdad also suggested there was bias in the report by a UN fact-finding mission that pointed a finger at Syrian influence over the political atmosphere in which the killing took place. "What caused the division in Lebanon is the resolution," Mekdad told reporters in response to the mission's report, released earlier on Thursday.
| Hezbollah, the Paleos and the Syrians being such uniting forces in a way. |
"This is the background that polarised the Lebanese people, not the Syrian presence, which has been accepted and welcomed by all the Lebanese people," he said.
| "They love us! They really love us!" |
Mekdad said Peter FitzGerald, the deputy Irish police commissioner who headed the fact-finding mission, "should have been more objective" in compiling the report. "He has taken one side against the other. It seems to me he met only with the opposition and those who wanted to accuse Syria of something," the ambassador said.
| "Why does everyone look at us like that?" |
The report said Syria "clearly exerted influence that goes beyond the reasonable exercise of cooperative or neighbourly relations," and said that atmosphere "provided the backdrop to the assassination." |