The United States gave its support to a U.N. report urging an international probe into last month's assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and renewed its call for the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. The State Department said late Thursday that the report by a U.N. fact-finding team led by Ireland's deputy police commissioner, Peter Fitzgerald, "raises serious and troubling allegations" about the February 14 killing. "The United States strongly supports the recommendation of the Fitzgerald report and of the [U.N.] Secretary-General that an independent international commission be entrusted with conducting an investigation," the department said in a statement. According to the State Department, the U.N. report "once again makes clear the importance of immediate and full withdrawal of all Syrian military and intelligence forces from Lebanon, accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559." "The Lebanese people deserve a government capable of leading them forward to prompt, free, and fair elections, without foreign interference and in the presence of international observers," the department wrote.
