Security Council Likely to Issue Presidential Statement on Lebanon

by **Admin** Sat Apr 05, 2008 4:36 am

The United Nations Security Council was reportedly preparing a presidential statement on Lebanon.
"Something is being prepared and discussed toward issuing an official Security Council presidential statement on Lebanon," said Deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Alejandro Wolf.

"We are closely working with the French delegation on this issue and I expect something new soon," Wolf added.

Meanwhile, Canadian Daniel Bellemare, head of the U.N. probe into the 2005 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, was holding contacts in New York with U.N. ambassadors as well as other ambassadors and the U.N. General Secretariat prior to addressing the Security Council for the first time Apr. 8 on the outcome of the investigation into the political crimes.

Last week, Bellemare presented a report to the Security Council in which he said a "criminal network" of individuals acted together to carry out Hariri's assassination.

The interim report by the panel headed by Bellemare said that it could now confirm that "on the basis of available evidence ... a network of individuals acted in concert to carry out the assassination."

It added that this "criminal network" or parts of it were also linked to other attacks against anti-Syrian Lebanese figures perpetrated between October 2004 and December 2005.