WASHINGTON, October 22, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – US President George W. Bush asked the UN Friday, October 21, for an "immediate action" against Syria after a UN investigator said top Syrian officials were implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri.

"The report strongly suggests that the politically motivated assassination could not have taken place without Syrian involvement" Bush told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

He asked the international community to "respond accordingly," but gave no specific suggestions.

Bush instructed his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "to call upon the United Nations to convene a session as quickly as possible to deal with this very serious matter."

German judge Detlev Mehlis, leading an international team investigating the massive bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut in February, said he found "converging evidence" of Syrian and Lebanese involvement and accused Damascus of blocking and misleading the investigation.

Lebanese authorities have arrested three former security chiefs on Tuesday, August 30, as suspects in the killing of the former five-time premier.

The assassination plunged Lebanon into chaos, sparking mass demonstrations against Syria, which at the time had 14,000 troops in Lebanon and was a key player in the political game.

Vociferously denying any role in the killing, Damascus has pledged to cooperate with the UN team formed on February 18 to investigate the horrendous murder.

Mekdad dismissed the Mehlis report as "a big lie."

"Accountability is going to be very important for the international community," Rice told reporters during a tour of her home state of Alabama with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"I obviously strongly agree with that," Straw said of Rice's remarks.

Newsweek recently reported that the military was considering plans to conduct special operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border intelligence gathering.

Rice successfully opposed the idea at a meeting of senior American officials held on October 1, arguing that diplomatic isolation was a more effective approach.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the Mehlis report "report reveals the Syrian authorities' insufficient cooperation with the inquiry".

France, the former colonizer of both Lebanon and Syria, has joined hands with the US in mounting pressures on Damascus since the Hariri assassination.

"Syria will harm its own interests if it does not cooperate fully with the investigation," said Emma Udwin, the European Commission's spokeswoman on external affairs.

For his part, Syria's UN ambassador, Faisal Mekdad, dismissed the Mehlis report as "a big lie."

"Why should the United Nations spend all this efforts, money, human resources and time, in order to reach exactly what the United States has been saying from day one without a shred of evidence?" Moustapha told AFP.

"But we believe that most of the member countries of the Security Council will have the decency and honesty of reading this report and easily perceiving the flaws and the logical loopholes in this report," he added.

In the first Syrian reaction to the report, Syrian Information Minister Mehdi Dakhlallah said the report was "politically biased".

"It is a political statement against Syria based on allegations by witnesses known for their hostility to Syria," he told Al-Jazeera television.

Mehlis had been criticized after it emerged that an unedited version of his report which included the names of Syrian officials was also released.

Claiming the version had been given to the media by mistake, the German prosecutor said the names were left out of the final draft not to give the impression that these allegations were "an established fact".

Click to read the full report on the UN Web site