DAMASCUS, Nov 1: Syria vowed on Tuesday to cooperate with a UN inquiry into the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri after a Security Council resolution demanded that Damascus help or face the consequences.

However defiant officials and hundreds of Syrians who turned out to protest in the aftermath of the resolution maintained Damascus’s innocence over the assassination, even though a report by the inquiry team has implicated top security officials here.

The resolution, passed by 15 votes to 0, demands that Syria detain suspects and urges a travel ban and a freeze of assets on all individuals designated as suspects in the slaying.

While a passage threatening sanctions was withdrawn to ensure a unanimous vote, the text does say the council ‘if necessary, could consider further action’. It did not spell out what the action could be.

“The resolution is unjust. Syria regrets that such a resolution was adopted unanimously. This arouses concern and regret among the Syrian people,” a high-ranking official in Damascus said.

More than 1,000 young Syrians turned out close to the US embassy to react to the resolution, carrying banners proclaiming: “We have nothing to hide”.

Anti-riot police were installed outside the US embassy where they prevented a dozen young people from going in.

Around the banner, carried by two youths in Raodah Square, other demonstrators waved Syrian flags and chanted ‘America, America, the night will not endure’, and ‘To attack the ‘ugly American’ is true solidarity’.

Around 200 students mounted another anti-American demonstration outside the Beaux-Arts Institute in the Syrian capital, while around 100 workers and students held another protest in Martyrs’ Square.

Syrian Expatriates Minister Bussaina Shaaban maintained in an interview with CNN that “Syria wants to cooperate because Syria wants to know the truth and wants to know who killed Hariri.

One of the most contentious passages in a confidential version of the report was witness testimony linking President Bashar al-Assad’s younger brother and brother-in-law to the murder.—AFP