Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri
thanked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon for extending the mandate of the Special
Tribunal for Lebanon and the appointment of a new prosecutor.
Hariri telephoned Ban hailing his
decisions, according to a statement issued by his press office.
Conflicting reports have emerged in
local media on whether the U.N. secretary general had appointed a new
prosecutor to replace Daniel Bellemare.
Premier Najib Miqati’s office denied
on Monday receiving any official information on the appointment of Deputy
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia Norman
Farrell as STL Prosecutor.
Bellemare will leave his post in
March for health reasons; he refused to seek reappointment for a second term as
prosecutor at the end of his tenure in February.
The denial came after al-Arabiya
reported that Farrell will most likely be Bellemare’s successor after Ban allegedly
informed Miqati about his choice.
On February 22, the U.N. extended
the mandate of the special tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of
former PM Rafiq Hariri.
The work of the tribunal has now
been extended for three years from March 1, announced U.N. spokesman Martin
Nesirky.
According to the statement, Hariri
also discussed the situation in Syria with Ban.
Hariri praised the appointment of
former U.N. leader Kofi Annan as a joint U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria.
He urged Ban to exert efforts to
“ease the suffering of the Syrian people and support their struggle for freedom
and democracy.”
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