U.S. Recalls Ambassador to Syria as Suspicions Over Bombing Grow

The U.S. ambassador to Syria was called back to Washington on Tuesday as anger swelled against Damascus after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

In Beirut, where Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb Monday, livid mourners spilled into the tense streets, cursing Syria while Koranic verse filled the air.

Mobs attacked Syrian laborers in southern Lebanon and burned tires outside a Syrian government building in Beirut. The Lebanese army went on alert, and flatbed trucks loaded with soldiers appeared on street corners throughout Beirut.

It is unclear who engineered the attack that killed Hariri and at least nine others, but his death has pitched Syria deeper into isolation and vulnerability. Suspicions have landed squarely on this country, which may pay a diplomatic and political price for the billionaire construction magnate’s death.

Hariri, a relative moderate, quit as prime minister in October in protest of Syria’s tampering in Lebanese affairs.

Syria’s ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustafa, denied that his country was involved. “Syria has nothing to benefit from what has happened,” he said in an interview on CNN.

But the assassination is expected to harden international resolve to force Syrian troops out of Lebanon and to strip Syria of support from nations that have been known to defend it, including France and Jordan.

Damascus has for months ignored a United Nations Security Council mandate to withdraw its forces from neighboring Lebanon.

Syrian officials have said that the smaller, weaker country, whose current president and many other leaders are staunch allies, depends on Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents to keep the peace among Lebanese factions.

The bombing shattered the logic of that argument. With or without Syrian involvement, someone managed to kill one of the nation’s most celebrated politicians with about 650 pounds of explosives in broad daylight in the bustling city center.

“Yesterday’s bombing calls into question the stated reason behind this presence of Syrian security forces: Lebanon’s internal security,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a Washington news conference announcing the recall of Ambassador Margaret Scobey. “The Lebanese people must be free to express their political preferences and choose their own representatives without intimidation and the threat of violence.”

At the U.N., the Security Council condemned the assassination and asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to investigate its cause and consequences. The U.S. asked the council to consider measures to punish the perpetrators, an American official said. The move could pave the way for another resolution demanding that Syria withdraw its troops.

Anne W. Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said: “Syria has got to get out of Lebanon.... I think that message has been very specific, and it’s time for Syria to listen to that now.”

U.S. officials did not specifically blame Syria for the killing, but Patterson said it was a direct result of Syria’s presence in Lebanon. “This is only the most recent and frankly the most horrific demonstration of the effects of that foreign interference,” she said.

The decision to recall Scobey appeared to be part of a broader Bush administration strategy to ratchet up pressure on Damascus to engage more seriously on such issues as its suspected support of the insurgency in Iraq and militant groups working to undermine the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The administration has also labeled the presence of 16,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon a source of instability, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the relationship between the United States and Syria was “worsening.”

“The withdrawal of the ambassador ... relates to, unfortunately, the fact that the relationship has been for some time not moving in a positive direction. But this event in Lebanon, of course, is the proximate cause of the withdrawal,” Rice said in Washington after meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister.

“We’re not laying blame,” Rice said of Hariri’s slaying. “It needs to be investigated. That’s the important point. However ... Syria is in interference in the affairs of Lebanon. There are Syrian forces in Lebanon. Syria operates out of Lebanon.”

The bombing provided the U.S. with a rare opportunity to work with France, with which Washington has had frosty relations since the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. worked with France on the Security Council statement condemning the assassination, and the administration also said it was prepared to seriously study any detailed proposal offered by French President Jacques Chirac, who has called for an international investigation into the assassination.

The threat of further bloodshed in Lebanon is real, no matter how Syria responds to increased pressure to remove its soldiers, who have been in the country nearly three decades.

If Syria continues to dig in its heels in the nation, which it regards as strategically indispensable, the split in Lebanon over the occupation could turn more violent.

Worries over internal strife are rising because parliamentary elections scheduled for this spring are widely seen as a referendum on Syria’s presence.

There is also fear that if forced by international pressure to abandon Lebanon, Syria could stage attacks to prove that the country can’t protect itself.

Hariri’s slaying has galvanized and united Syria’s opponents in Lebanon, introducing a new depth of rage into the calls for Damascus to leave the country.

Before Hariri quit his post, Syria had pressured Lebanese lawmakers to amend the constitution so that Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a longtime Hariri rival and Syrian ally, could retain his office beyond term limits.

“I charge the Lebanese-Syrian police regime with responsibility for Hariri’s death,” said Lebanese Druze opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, who was among the throngs of mourners who flocked to Hariri’s home to express condolences to his family.

“This is the regime of terrorists and terrorism that was able yesterday to wipe out Rafik Hariri,” Jumblatt said.

Some observers, however, questioned the probability of Syrian complicity. They said that Hariri had many business and political enemies and that Syria had too much to lose by participating in an assassination.

“It’s too big for them,” said Waleed Kazziha, a Lebanese political scientist at the American University in Cairo. “The last thing they want to do now is involve themselves in an assassination plot. It would be an escalation they are desperately trying to avoid.”

Syrian ambassador Moustafa said, “A tragic event happened of catastrophic dimensions, and people are trying to score politically to their advantage on what has happened, the sorrows of the others.”

Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam was among the mourners who visited Hariri’s home to offer sympathy to the slain magnate’s family Tuesday. In Syria, meanwhile, officials decried the assassination and called for an investigation.

“The assassination was a horrible act of terrorism,” said George Jabbour, a Syrian lawmaker and political analyst. “Hariri was not an overt enemy of Syria, so why has Syria been targeted as an actor or the perpetrator?... As a citizen of Syria and a member of parliament, I am asking for an objective, judicial investigation regarding this crime.”

Among the circumstantial evidence against Syria is that Hariri was slain while under the guard of the Lebanese government and, by implication, Syrian agents.

Moreover, Syria’s Lebanese allies, including the current prime minister, had in recent weeks hurled recriminations and vague threats at opposition leaders, accusing them of serving Israeli and American interests by calling for a Syrian withdrawal from the country.

“They’re caught red-handed, even if they didn’t do it. They’re in a real fix, and I don’t see how they can get out of it,” said Nadim Shehadi, head of the Center for Lebanese Studies at Oxford.

Whether Syria played a role or not, the political fallout from the U.S. and other nations is already being seen. The slaying came after a year in which the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has been forced to scramble, with little success, to stave off the anger of the United States.

Even before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Washington had accused Syria of harboring terrorists, pursuing biological and chemical weapons and failing to cooperate in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Americans accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to stream across its border into Iraq, of giving shelter to people who were directing the Iraqi insurgency, and of allowing elements of the Iranian regime to operate from Syrian territory. In the spring, after months of threats, the United States imposed sanctions on Syria.

Officials in Damascus deny the American charges, and Assad’s government has redoubled its efforts to appear more cooperative.

Syria has stepped up surveillance of the Iraqi border, shared terrorism intelligence with the United States and offered to investigate insurgent leaders if Washington provides specific allegations and names.

But the United States has remained cool to the efforts.

“It could be that the old-guard element in Syria has said: ‘Enough is enough. We’ll never appease neoconservative America,” said Oxford’s Shehadi. “They’ve played at everything from reform to anti-terror, and it hasn’t worked. If they [assassinated Hariri], they’re putting their foot down.”

Diplomats in Syria warn that it’s a mistake to regard Syrian policy as a unified structure emanating from the president’s office. In recent interviews in Damascus, Western diplomats referred to Syria as “a dictatorship without a dictator.”

Assad hasn’t managed to keep a leash on Syria’s many and storied intelligence agencies, diplomats said, nor has he reined in the old-guard elements still floating around from the days of his father, the late President Hafez Assad.

It is possible, observers say, that Bashar Assad himself may not know for certain whether people in his regime have backed violence in Lebanon.

But other Syrians were more skeptical.

Haitham Maleh, a human rights lawyer and former judge, criticized the authorities for meddling in Lebanese affairs by blatantly pressuring Lebanese lawmakers to amend the constitution last year.

“It was a big mistake for the Syrians to stick their noses into the Lebanese political arena,” Maleh said.

“They don’t think about the consequences. They opened the door to this trouble they’re in, but I don’t know how they’re going to close it.”

Stack reported from Beirut and special correspondent Abouzeid from Damascus. Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Tyler Marshall, Sonni Efron and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.