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Syrian Orders Probe Into Killing

Hoping to ease international pressure on his country, Syrian president Bashar Assad has ordered an investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, trying to make it seem as if the U.N. investigation into the assassination - if implicating senior Syrian officials - will not find Assad himself responsible for the killing.

Assad ordered the establishment of a judicial committee "to question Syrian civilians and military personnel on all matters relating to the mission of the U.N. investigation commission," Syrian state-run media reported. Even so, U.N. investigators have suggested that the plans to kill Hariri could not have been carried out by high-level Syrian and Lebanese involvement, when Syria was still the de facto ruling occupier of Lebanon at the time of the assassination.

The Syrian leadership was said to be caught off guard by the scope of the report, which concludes that senior officials here and in Lebanon almost certainly had a hand in Hariri`s assassination.