UN investigators likely to interview Bashar 'within days'

Damascus: UN investigators are expected to meet Syrian President Bashar Al Assad as early as Thursday to discuss Syria's alleged role in the killing of a Lebanese former prime minister, Western diplomats and a Baath Party official said.

The team, led by Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz, will also interview Vice-President Farouq Al Shara, who was foreign minister when Rafik Hariri and 22 others were killed in a truck bomb in Beirut last year, they said on Wednesday.

"We are hearing that the meeting will finally take place in the next few days," one diplomat said.

It would be the first time UN investigators are known to have met Bashar since the Hariri inquiry began. Syrian government officials refused to comment, saying they were bound by a deal with Brammertz not to leak information.

A UN spokeswoman in Beirut said: "Mr Brammertz said ... that the Syrians had agreed to meet with the commission during April but we do not comment on his movements."

Bashar, who has repeatedly denied Syrian involvement in the killing, said last month he had agreed to meet Brammertz in April and that the investigators were free to ask anything.