Syria may trouble Lebanon after UN vote - Hariri

Syria could spark trouble in Lebanon in response to a UN Security Council vote to set up a tribunal to try the killers of Rafik al-Hariri, the former prime minister's son said yesterday.

Pro-Syrian politicians and parties, including President Emile Lahoud and Hezbollah, said the UN had ridden roughshod over Lebanon's constitution and could provoke further divisions in a country still haunted by its 1975-90 civil war.

The Security Council voted on Wednesday to set up the court after failed efforts to get its statutes constitutionally approved in Lebanon, where a political crisis has paralysed normal government for months. Syria said after the vote that it could lead to more instability in Lebanon.

Saad al-Hariri, the son and political heir of the slain premier, said the tribunal would end the impunity that political assassins have enjoyed in Lebanon for four decades.

"How could the tribunal affect the security of Lebanon? How could punishing the people who killed Rafik al-Hariri... affect the security of Lebanon?" Mr Hariri said in an interview.

"If Lebanon is going to be unstable it is the doing of those who say that Lebanon is going to be unstable," he said.

"They (the Syrians) won't be able to destabilise us because they tried before and they have failed."

Mr Hariri and his allies in the governing coalition accuse Syria of orchestrating the February 14, 2005, bombing which killed Mr Hariri and 22 others in Beirut. They also say Damascus was behind a string of other attacks on anti-Syrian figures.