Sally blog

Hariri murder indictments "in months": U.N. envoy

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A senior U.N. official said on Thursday he expected a court probing the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to issue indictments "in the coming months."

Diplomats and Lebanese officials have been predicting privately that the potentially explosive indictments could come late this year or early next. Thursday's comments by Michael Williams, U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, were among the few public statements on the timing.

"I, like others, expect to see indictments from the special tribunal in the coming months," Williams told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council on Lebanon. "I don't know whether that's next week or next year."

Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, died along with 22 other people in a Beirut car bomb explosion in 2005. A U.N.-backed tribunal, based in the Netherlands, was set up by the Security Council two years later to try suspects in the killings.

The Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah has said it expects its members to be indicted and has warned against cooperation with the court.

Lebanese politicians fear a major crisis, and possible relapse into violence, if that proves to be the case, but Williams said he did not expect tribunal action to be delayed by political considerations.

Williams also welcomed a decision by the Israeli cabinet on Wednesday to withdraw troops from part of a village on the Lebanese border that has long inflamed tensions with Hezbollah.

The United Nations has ruled that the northern part of Ghajar village is located in Lebanon and has long urged Israel to pull out.

Williams said he and Major-General Alberto Asarta, commander of the UNIFIL U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, planned to visit Israel early next week to discuss future arrangements for Ghajar.

Williams said a September 3 explosion in the southern Lebanese village of Shihabiya was "presumably caused by ordnance" but he stopped short of blaming Hezbollah for an incident that could show violation of a U.N. resolution.

Under a Security Council resolution that ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, southern Lebanon should be free of all weapons other than those carried by the Lebanese army or UNIFIL forces.

The latest report on Lebanon by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, considered by the council on Thursday, says UNIFIL and the Lebanese army were blocked by "local people" from reaching the blast site while evidence "was tampered with or removed." But it too avoids saying Hezbollah was responsible.

Israel says a Hezbollah weapons dump blew up and wants the United Nations to name the group. But Ban's report says UNIFIL "has neither been provided with, nor found, evidence of the unauthorized transfer of arms into its area of operations."

(Reporting by Patrick Worsnip; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)