MIDDLE EAST: Syria is trying to negotiate a deal to prevent punitive action by the United Nations if, as is widely expected, the Damascus government is linked to the February 14th assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, according to US and European officials.
Over the past month the government of President Bashar Assad has been inquiring about the potential for a deal, roughly equivalent to what Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy did to end tough international sanctions imposed for his country's role in the 1988 midair bombing of Pan Am flight 103, the officials said.
President Gadafy eventually agreed to hand over two intelligence officials linked to the bombing for an international trial, a move that began Libya's political rehabilitation.
But the United States, France and UN officials have all recently signalled to Syria that they will not compromise on the completion of a full investigation into the killing of Lebanese reformer Rafik Hariri, or subsequent legal steps, wherever the inquiry leads, the officials said.
The UN investigation moved this week to Syria, where Detlev Mehlis, the chief investigator, interviewed the two most recent Syrian intelligence chiefs in Lebanon and their aides in the inquiry into the massive bombing that killed Mr Hariri and 19 others as they drove through Beirut.
Since the arrest last month of four senior Lebanese security officials with close ties to Damascus, Syria has been "running scared", said a US official familiar with the overtures.
Mr Mehlis, who has taken the investigation far deeper, far faster than initially anticipated, "is coming up with stuff that is making people in Damascus nervous", the official said.
The Guardian reports that significant information has come from a Syrian defector who claims he was in the room when the killing was discussed.
Diplomatic overtures from Damascus have included vague suggestions of a willingness to hand over certain unnamed security individuals in exchange for guarantees that any subsequent trial would not try to point fingers any higher in Syria, according to several western officials familiar with Syria's moves.
For Mr Assad, a former ophthalmologist who inherited power after the death of his father in 2000, the stakes of the UN investigation are high and extend well beyond the inquiry into the Hariri killing.
"Bashar is moving toward the moment of truth, the defining moment of his presidency," said a senior European diplomat familiar with the investigation. "The Mehlis report is due on October 25th, and if he reports that this goes all the way to the top of Damascus, there will be a political earthquake."
If the UN investigation does name Syrian officials, Mr Assad will be under pressure to arrest and try the alleged perpetrators or face international condemnation and punitive actions such as economic or diplomatic sanctions, say US and European officials.
But turning over some of his own officials could also jeopardise Mr Assad's tenuous hold on power and risk his security staff taking action against him, say the officials. - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)