Rice: Syria Must Keep Lebanon Jury Safe

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice listens as she takes part in a one-day conference about Darfur, Monday, June 25, 2007 in Paris. France pressed Monday for international financing of a new, enlarged peacekeeping force for Darfur, and decried the world's lack of action on the crisis there. "Silence is killing," said President Nicolas Sarkozy. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (Michel Euler - AP)

PARIS -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a veiled warning to Syria on Tuesday, saying a Lebanon tribunal must be safe while it handles the murder of a Lebanese leader, a prominent critic of Syrian influence in Lebanon.

"One thing we'll be talking about is how to make certain these people can be secure in their work," Rice told reporters after discussing plans for the tribunal with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

Asked how outsiders could safeguard the Lebanese tribunal members, Rice referred to the string of political killings since the 2005 assassination of then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Supporters of Hariri blame Syria and its affiliates for the deaths.

"One thing is to make sure there is a spotlight on the problem of intimidation and the kinds of assassinations that have taken place in Lebanon," Rice said.

The United Nations Security Council is creating a tribunal to consider the Hariri case, after Lebanon's parliament, deadlocked between opponents and allies of longtime overlord Syria, failed to convene the panel on its own.

The tribunal underlies the current political standoff in Lebanon, the country's most serious crisis of governance since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

Saniora's Western-backed government and the opposition led by the Syrian-backed Hezbollah movement are struggling for power, and rival Lebanese politicians have not met since a national dialogue conference ended last year without agreement.

The anti-Syrian forces contend that Syria fears the tribunal and is using its influence in Lebanese politics to try to kill or cripple it.

U.N. officials have said the tribunal could take up to a year to establish, and with the investigation ongoing, it remains unclear who would face trial. The panel's members have not been selected.

A massive suicide truck bomb in Beirut killed Hariri and 22 others in February 2005. A U.N. investigator said the assassination's complexity suggested Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services played a role. Four Lebanese generals, top pro-Syrian security chiefs, have been under arrest for 20 months, accused of involvement.

Syria has denied any involvement in the bombing and has said it will not cooperate with the tribunal.

Syria held political and military sway in tiny neighboring Lebanon for some three decades. Besides armed troops on Beirut streets, Syrian intelligence forces were often a shadowy but pervasive force in Lebanese daily life.