UN meeting to put more pressure on Syria over Hariri death

Foreign ministers will meet in New York today for a highly charged meeting of the United Nations Security Council, increasing international pressure over Syria's alleged involvement in the murder of Rafiq Hariri, former Lebanese prime minister.

Diplomats said a US-French call for a financial freeze and travel ban on individual suspects, and a more general threat of sanctions if Syria does not co-operate with the international investigation, could garner sufficient support to pass without any veto.

The most recent indications this morning is that the resolution will pass, as it will garner the necessay 9 votes, and that neither China nor Russia will put their veto for the time being.

But let's go back a few months:

• On 14 February this year, Rafik Hariri, a former Prime Minister of Lebanon and a harsh critic of Syria's domination of his country, is killed in a massive truck bomb (which also kills another 17 people).

• Very quickly afterwards,  pretty much unanimous calls are made at the UN for an independent enquiry in this assassination, as well as for an immediate application of an earlier joint US-French resolution (n°1559, voted in September 2004) calling for less Syrian interference on Lebanese affairs. In fact, this time, calls are explicitly for the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

• Under massive international and huge demonstrations in Lebanon, Syria takes its troops out of that country in March.

• The UN report on the assassination (which can be downloaded here (pdf) from the BBC website), prepared by Detlev Mehlis, a German diplomat, came our earlier that month and strongly suggests that Syria was involved:

KEY UN FINDINGS (box)

• Assassins had considerable resources and capabilities
  
• Evidence suggests both Syria and Lebanon were involved
  
• Crime was prepared over several months
  
• Hariri's movements and itineraries were monitored
  
• Highly unlikely Syrian or Lebanese intelligence were not aware of assassination plot
  

The names of close collaborators to Syrian President Bashar el-Assad were "mistakenly" released, and they turned out to be Assef Shawkat et Maher Assad, respectively the President's brother-in-law and brother...

 For a skeptical take on that report, see Soj's take on it.

In the background, there has been a lot of military action on the Iraqi-Syrian border, which is seen as one of the main routes into Iraq for terrorists or guerilla combatants or their supplies, and which US forces have difficulty securing. There have been various bits of information about skirmishes between US and Syrian forces near the border or even inside Syria, and much speculation about the desire of the backed-in-a-corner White House to start a new war to switch attention from Libby, Miers or the now widely shared perception of incompetence post Katrina.

So the current resolution is a pretty harsh one, and an obvious step towards making Syria an international pariah and a legitimate target for the use of force. Among other things, it includes:

(from the above BBC link)

The draft resolution calls for a travel ban and the freezing of assets of those suspected of involvement in the assassination.

The text also calls for Syria to detain those named by investigators and to allow witnesses and suspects to be interviewed outside the country.

And it threatens further measures such as economic sanctions if Damascus fails to co-operate.

The call for suspects to be detained and sent outside of the country is especially harsh as the two named suspects are close members of El-Assad's family and leaders of his tribe, the Allawis, which are a minority in Syria but  have traditionally held the power in the country. Le Monde, quoting a Lebanese editorialist effectively calls this a 45 day ultimatum on El-Assad, with two impossible options: sacrificing close allies, or becoming an international pariah and facing stiff sanctions.

As Le Monde indicates, El-Assad's strategy is likely to play for time, and count on two things: (i) protection form Russia, including a veto against any threat of military action, and (ii) the unwillingness of most to add more tension to an already pretty volatile region.

But the interesting thing is France's active participation in the process so far.

This article in Le Monde (behind subscription wall, I'll email its content to anyone who asks me) provides a good run down of what's going on:

• France is first and foremost interested in the stability of Lebanon, and in getting rid of Syrian influence there. That's the main goal for France;

• the second goal was to improve relations with Washington. The country was seen as a good topic to mend fences with the Bush administration, and France approached Washington with the proposed UN resolution. both the resolution and the French demarche were obviously welcomed by Bush, and resolution 1559 passed in September 2004.

So far, the resolution does not include that, and both countries can still pretend to have the same objective, but that may not last. France will not support anything that could lead to another military action. Even hints of "fighting terrorism" would not be welcomed in Paris.

I'll finish on a slightly optimistic note, quoting a joint NYT/FT article on the current resolution:

Ms. Rice and other American officials have said they do not seek "regime change" in Syria but rather "behavior change." As an example, they point to Libya, where Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi decided in 2003 to admit the existence of his weapons programs, agree to dismantle them and thereby start to shed his country's pariah status.

Even for those wishing to see Mr. Assad's removal, there is a fear that his successor could come from the ranks of either his family or cronies in his government of Allawites, a minority Muslim sect, or from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, the most popular organization among Syria's majority Sunnis.

"For the first term of his presidency, the Bush administration had a long list of complaints about Syria that got longer after Iraq," said Flynt Leverett, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution who worked in the White House at the start of this presidency. "Since the second term started, I think they've been moving toward an undeclared policy of regime change, as long as it doesn't require too much effort by the United States," Mr. Leverett added. "It's regime change on the cheap."

So this points to the grownups in the Bush administration recognising that doing more than what is on the table today would require ressources unavailable today, and thus that tough diplomacy, backed by France, stands a chance to meet some policy objectives.

But again, focusing on policy is never very wise with this administration. Will domestic US politics make them reconsider this relatively reasonable approach? Today's resolution will certainly not close the door on that.