Syrian president seeks to limit damage from the STL

The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, appears to have adopted a deliberately vague position with respect to the direction that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which established to bring to justice those responsible for the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, is taking, even though the issue is of critical importance for Syria's security interests owing to the risk of conflict breaking out in Lebanon and drawing in Israel and Syria. Mr Assad has been generally sceptical about the STL, but he has avoided overtly attacking its integrity. This is in contrast to the leader of Hizbullah, a Lebanese Shia group, Hassan Nasrallah, who has denounced the tribunal as an arm of Israeli policy. Mr Assad has also closely consulted the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri (a son of Rafiq), about how to deal with the STL. Mr Hariri remains committed to maintaining official Lebanese government support for the tribunal, but he has also declared that he wishes to avoid the process become politicised. This suggests that if Hizbullah members were to be indicted for carrying out the assassination he would not wish the tribunal to pursue the question of whose orders they were following.

Such an outcome would probably satisfy Syria and Saudi Arabia, and could even be deemed adequate by France. However, one of the problems facing the parties seeking to minimise the damaging fallout from the STL is that they cannot guarantee such an outcome without interfering in the judicial process. During his visit to Paris, Mr Assad said that he believed that France could play a role through its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council in preventing the STL's "politicisation". Mr Nasrallah appears to have concluded that he cannot afford the risk that the STL's indictments will spread further than those directly involved in the assassination, and that he has little option but to persist in his campaign to force the Lebanese government to renounce the tribunal, even if that entails bringing the government down.

Syria would undoubtedly be closely involved in negotiating a solution to the political crisis that would ensue. Mr Assad would have to take into consideration Israel's assessment of such a situation. Israel could be prompted to attack Lebanon once more if it considered that Hizbullah had in effect taken control of the country. However, Israel might be persuaded to hold back if Syria were able to broker a deal involving some checks on Hizbullah's power. In the former scenario, Syria would have to take care to manage the risk of being drawn into the conflict, particularly given the recent allegations by the US and Israel that Syria has directly supplied advanced medium-range missiles to Hizbullah. Conversely, if Syria were to impose curbs on Hizbullah, this might put Mr Assad on a collision course with Iran.