Syria Feels Heat Over U.N. Report

It was an altogether different mood Friday night at the tomb of Hariri, under the shadow of a sprawling, Ottoman-style, blue-domed mosque in downtown Beirut, where hundreds of Lebanese gathered to mark the report's release.

Some prayed by the grave. Others, carrying Lebanese flags, called loudly for Lahoud to resign.

"There is no god but God, and Syria is the enemy of God," some shouted in a chant that usually names Israel or the United States.

"What should happen next is exactly what's happening. People should express themselves," said Reina Sarkis, a 34-year-old therapist. She wore a white T-shirt on which she had scrawled in black, "I love Mehlis," a reference to the U.N. investigator.

To many in Lebanon, Lahoud's stubbornness has left the country's politics in a frustrating limbo. On one side are the forces behind the protests this spring that helped force the end of Syria's 29-year military presence. These forces, while divided, now command a majority in parliament.

On the other side are Lahoud and the still formidable influence that Syria wields through some Lebanese factions and parts of Lebanon's intelligence apparatus. "This president now, he has to resign. We don't have a president of the republic. We have someone who is implicated by a conflict," said Melhem Chaoul, an analyst at Lebanese University. "We need stability, and with him, we don't have stability."

In Lebanon's often Byzantine politics, Lahoud can still draw on factions and institutions that are reluctant to see him go, each for its own reason. Lebanon's most powerful Shiite Muslim movement, Hezbollah, has backed his tenure, as have followers of Michel Aoun, a civil war-era prime minister and member of parliament who is popular among Lebanon's Maronite Christians.

The Mehlis report had become a virtual national obsession in Lebanon, after rumors swirled for weeks over its possible conclusions. The day it was released, a disc jockey at Radio Liban played "What a Wonderful World.".

The response was far more muted in Damascus, where the media have paid scant attention to the investigation. "When was the report released?" asked Majed Natour, a baker kneading dough sprinkled with pistachios at a pastry shop.

Like many people in the city, he was dismissive of the investigation. When told of its findings, he shook his head: It was yet another ploy to benefit Israel, whose interests he said were promoted in the region by the aggressive actions of the United States. "That's my opinion," the 25-year-old said. "Syria is the only country that will say no to them."

Former president Hafez Assad, who died in 2000 after 30 years in power, pursued a skillful foreign policy that gave Syria a political role often exceeding its military or economic might. Tensions flared with the United States, but Syria often delivered just enough.

Under Assad's less seasoned son, the country has found itself perhaps more isolated than at any time in its modern history. The United States has demanded a comprehensive shift in policy -- including cutting support to Hezbollah and radical Palestinian factions and closure of the Iraqi border to infiltration by foreign fighters. Syrian officials point to concrete steps they have taken on the border to arrest would-be insurgents and say the United States has done little on the sections of the Iraqi frontier it controls.

The European Union has delayed signing a trade agreement, a decision Syrians attribute to U.S. pressure. The U.S. ambassador was withdrawn after Hariri's assassination, and visits by senior European officials are rare.

The government itself appears divided between those who believe they can wait the Bush administration out and others who believe only wholesale engagement can break the sense of siege. "Of course, we know really what matters to the United States is Iraq," said Jabbour, the Syrian legislator. "So is there a Syrian-American deal on Iraq? Would Syria help the United States pacify Iraq?

"I don't know."

Special correspondent Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.