The Hariri Case.

In their subtle way, all the four most powerful men in Saudi Arabia - King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan and Princes Nayef and Salman - want to see the Hariri murder case being handled properly. Hariri, a billionaire Saudi businessman turned Lebanese politician, was close to all four of them as well as most other members of the Saudi royal family. Born to a poor Lebanese family, Hariri emigrated to Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and quickly became one of the most successful business people in the kingdom. In the early 1980s, Hariri was made an assistant to Prince Bandar in mediating between Damascus and Beirut to end Lebanon's civil war. With Riyadh's encouragement, Hariri became PM in Lebanon in the 1990s, after having brokered the Ta'if peace agreement for which the ruling Assad family in Syria never forgave him. His murder has been blamed on the Syrian regime.

Damascus has shown no sign of toning down its opposition to an international trial of those accused of involvement in Hariri's murder. An international trial would undermine Syria's sovereignty. However, UNSC Resolution 1644, setting up an international inquest into Hariri's murder was issued under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Resolutions passed under Chapter 7 bypass the national sovereignty issue in the name of international law. Thus, if Syria continues its campaign to prevent the international inquest, it could find itself in direct defiance of the UN, a position in which Iraq under Saddam was until March 2003. Syria's argument is that, since it is ready to try any Syrian charged with involvement in Hariri's murder, there is no need for UN intervention. But UNSC powers say if Syria is certain its nationals have been charged on spurious grounds, it will be better to have them exonerated by an international court.

In opposing the international tribunal, London-based Iranian journalist Amir Taheri says, Syria is treading the path taken by Libyan ruler Col. Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and the late Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. For over a decade Qadhafi refused to co-operate with the international investigation into the destruction of the Pan-Am jet over Lockerbie in Scotland. "The result was years of diplomatic and political isolation for his regime, translated into economic misery and social shame for his people". Having paid that high price, Qadhafi ended up accepting what he had rejected for years, and that at a time he was obliged to take the worst deal on offer.

Milosevic and his immediate successors played a similar strategy in the name of nationalism. They kept their people in a state of denial about the atrocities that the Serbian military had committed in Bosnia and Kosovo. Their argument was that if crimes were committed, it was up to the Serbian justice to take action. In reality, however, Serbian justice took no action until recently when it sentenced four officers to imprisonment on charges of murdering a number of Muslim youths in Bosnia in 1995. The Serbian defiance of the international community led it into a war it could not win. Milosevic was toppled and eventually taken to The Hague where he stood trial on a charge of crimes against humanity before he died of a heart attack.

Taheri says: "Serbia's defiance has done great damage to the nation's economy, led to the secession of Montenegro from the rump Yugoslav Federation, and is setting the stage for secession by Kosovo. Serbia is not allowed even to apply for membership of the European Union until it has abandoned its defiance on the issue of war criminals. By seeding a similar field, Syria is already reaping a similar harvest".

A vital agreement with the European Union, negotiated over years and designed to save the Syrian economy from slow death, has been put on hold. Diplomatic contacts with Syria have been curtailed to a minimum, leaving it increasingly dependent on the Shi'ite theocracy of of Iran. The Lebanese opposition, partly backed by Riyadh, is trying to use the issue of the international tribunal as a means of furthering its own aims in the power struggle against PM Fou'ad Siniora's coalition government.

The Lebanese branch of Hizbullah is determined not to let the UN set a precedent for intervening in the affairs of the region, a precedent which could later be used against the Shi'ite theocracy not only with regard to its controversial nuclear programme but also for its alleged role in the suicide bombing of many US and French troops in Lebanon during the early 1980s (see news15-ArabSecurityQuartet-Hariri-Apr9-07).