Syria has confirmed it has received a UN commission's request to interview Bashar al-Assad, the president, and his foreign minister.
 | "Yeah. We got it. What about it?" |
The Syrian official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said on Tuesday the Foreign Ministry had received the request, which also asked to talk to Farouk al-Sharaa, the foreign minister, on Sunday. The official would not say how Damascus planned to respond.
| Lemme guess: They're gonna say 'no.' |
Nasra Hassan, spokeswoman for the UN investigation, announced on Monday that the commission had asked a second time to question al-Assad, as well as al-Sharaa, after Abdul-Halim Khaddam's TV interview last week in which he alleged that al-Assad had threatened Rafiq al-Hariri several months before his assassination. Damaging revelations by Khaddam, a former vice-president, has further deepened suspicions of Syrian involvement in al-Hariri's killing, a charge that Syria denies.
The commission asked to interview al-Assad in July last year but was refused. But Ahmad Hajj Ali, an analyst and member of Syria's ruling Baath party, said al-Assad could not be interviewed by the probe. "That's impossible because it would be an attack on [Syrian] sovereignty," said Hajj Ali. "Firstly because there is no judicial pretext permitting an interview between the president and the commission and also because it would lead to a politicisation of the enquiry," he said.
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