The US led calls on Friday for action against Syria after a UN investigator implicated top Syrian officials in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
The report by UN investigator Detlev Mehlis is to be discussed by the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday when possible new moves could be discussed.
US President George W. Bush called the report "deeply disturbing" and said that the US would seek a meeting of the UN Security Council "as quickly as possible to deal with this very serious matter."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said: "This is a very serious matter -- that you have Syrian involvement in the assassination of the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri."
"There will have to be some way to ensure accountability for what has already been found here," she said in a joint press conference with UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Birmingham, Alabama.
The chief US diplomat also noted that the report shows "clear indications that the Syrian government had not been cooperating" with the investigation into the Beirut bomb blast in February that killed Hariri and 20 other people.
Straw, on a tour of Rice's southern home state, said that the UK fully backed the US position on the report's findings.
The Mehlis report cited "converging evidence" of Syrian and Lebanese involvement and accused Damascus of blocking and misleading the investigation.
Meanwhile, the son and political heir of the slain former Lebanese prime minister yesterday praised the UN probe and called for an international tribunal to try the alleged killers.
"The hour of truth has come. The blood of the martyr Rafik Hariri and his colleagues in the march toward freedom, dignity, sovereignty will not have been shed in vain," Legislator Saad Hariri said.
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Questions remain about Hariri killing
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
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SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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