LEBANON: A more comprehensive investigation of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination may be needed, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, said yesterday.
He was speaking to Arab leaders in Algiers, hours after another bomb in Lebanon killed three people.
"Within the next few days, I expect to release the report of the mission of inquiry I established in the wake of the [ Hariri] killing. A more comprehensive investigation may well also be necessary," he said.
Mr Annan sent a team to Beirut - headed by deputy Garda commissioner Peter Fitzgerald - to look into the "circumstances, causes and consequences" of Hariri's death after the Lebanese opposition complained that the Syrian-backed authorities were not investigating it properly, and were possibly trying to protect the culprits. The authorities began to clear up the scene of the assassination on February 14th before forensic science evidence had been collected, although they stopped in the face of protests.
There is speculation in the Lebanese press that the UN will set up an international investigating committee once its initial report is published.
The acting prime minister, Omar Karami, another ally of Syria, has resisted a full-scale international investigation on the grounds that it would infringe Lebanon's sovereignty.
Justice ministry officials in Beirut said yesterday that the magistrate heading the current investigation, Michel Abou Arraj, had asked to be excused because of his heavy case-load in the criminal courts. The supreme judicial council is expected to consider his request today. It may decide to replace him but if it does not, the inquiry will be on hold.
Yesterday's bomb killed three people in a shopping centre in Kaslik, a predominantly Christian area 15 miles north of Beirut, heightening the fear that pro-Syrian elements are trying to provoke communal violence.
The blast, the second in four days, ripped the roof off part of the Alta Vista centre early in the morning, and smashed the windows of more than a dozen shops in the street outside.
Christian politicians who visited the scene said the bombing sought to undermine Lebanon's stability and urged their supporters not to be drawn into sectarian strife.
"It is clear that those who carried out this attack are targeting the security and stability of the country," an opposition MP, Faris Bouez, told reporters. "It is a political message to the [ anti-Syrian] independence uprising."
On Saturday, a car bomb wrecked shops and flats in the New Jdeideh district of Beirut, another Christian area. Eleven were injured.