Hariri funeral: The finger points at Syria

Calls have intensified for Rafik Hariri’s assassins to be caught, while pressure mounted against Syria amid increasing speculation over its perceived role in the killing of Lebanon’s popular former prime minister, whose burial was attended by more than 200,000 mourners.

This week’s assassination of Hariri, 60, in a huge bomb blast claimed 16 other lives and increased tensions in Lebanon and its neighbouring powerbroker, Syria, which yesterday announced it was forming a united front with Iran to confront possible threats.

The move came as Washington recalled its ambassador to Syria following the Hariri killing. France also backed renewed US calls for Syria to withdraw its 15,000 troops from Lebanon, where they have been based since the early stages of the 1975 to 1990 civil war.

Hariri’s funeral yesterday drew the largest crowd seen in Lebanon, aside from a 1997 Mass by Pope John Paul II that attracted almost one million people.

A procession stretched nearly two miles from Hariri’s home to downtown Beirut’s Mohammed al-Amin Mosque, which the billionaire Sunni Muslim had built and was buried at.

The funeral also resembled an anti-Syrian protest, with thousands hurling insults at that country’s president, Bashar Assad, and his Lebanese counterpart, the pro-Damascus Emile Lahoud.

Lahoud, a Hariri rival, stayed away from the service after Hariri’s supporters and family told him not to attend. Hariri resigned last year amid opposition to a Syrian-backed constitutional amendment that extended Lahoud’s presidency.

Syria denies involvement in Hariri’s death, but this has done little to quell speculation it at least played a hand in killing Lebanon’s premier of 10 of 14 years following the civil war.

French President Jacques Chirac, a friend of Hariri’s, made a seven-hour visit to Lebanon to offer condolences. He said the assassination “angered the international community, and this requires that we shed the light on this heinous, indescribable act”.

Later, Chirac and his wife accompanied Hariri’s widow, Nazek, to her slain husband’s flower-covered grave. Hundreds of Hariri supporters chanted “Syria out, Syria out” before singing Lebanon’s national anthem and yelling ”Vive Chirac! Vive La France!”

“I don’t see how an assassination of such size could have been planned without Syria’s knowledge.

"It’s ludicrous to say the opposite,” French lawmaker Pierre Lellouche, who belongs to Chirac’s centre right majority, said in London.