Is the UN case against Syria about to collapse?

Is the UN case against Syria about to collapse?

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1841934,00.html

'I was paid to blame Syria'
28/11/2005 15:46 - (SA)

Beirut - A man has claimed on Syrian state TV that he was bribed to
accuse top Syrian officials of the murder of Rafiq Hariri in his
testimony to the United Nations commission into the former Lebanese
premier's assassination.

Husam Taher Husam, a former conscript in the Syrian army, alleged in a
75-minute interview on Sunday night that Saad Hariri, the son of the
slain Hariri, met him several months ago and offered him $1.3m to
testify against top Syrian officials.

The spokesperson for the Syrian inquiry into Hariri's murder, Ibrahim
Daraji, said on Monday that if Husam is the unidentified key witness
quoted in the UN commission's interim report, then the United Nations'
case "has completely collapsed."

Daraji spoke at a press conference in Damascus on Monday at which
Husam reiterated the allegations he had made on Syrian television the
night before.

Syria criticised UN report

Husam told the television that UN officials told him what to say when
he gave evidence to the UN commission, in particular that he was
"close to" Brigadier General Assef Shawkat, the chief of Syrian
military intelligence and brother-in-law of Syria's president, who was
named in the commission's interim report last month.

"But I've never seen him in my whole life," Husam said of Shawkat in
the television interview.

It was not possibly to reach Saad Hariri for a response on Monday as
he was travelling in South America. News bulletins on Hariri's own
Future TV station did not refer to Husam's claims. The UN commission
rarely responds to media reports about the investigation.

Husam's allegations came days before five senior Syrian officials were
due to appear before the UN commission in Vienna. The officials, who
have not been named either by the commission or Syria, will be
questioned in the UN headquarters in the Austrian capital as part of
an agreement reached after more than two weeks of negotiations over
where and how their evidence would be taken.

In its interim report, the commission implicated the Syrian and
Lebanese intelligence services in the Beirut bombing that killed
Hariri and 20 others on February 14. Lebanon welcomed the report, but
Syria rejected it as politicised and unfounded on evidence. Syrian
officials have for weeks tried to discredit the UN investigation as
biased against Syria.

Previously, another Syrian, Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, gave evidence to
the commission but was later discredited. At the commission's
recommendation, he was arrested in France in October and extradited to
Lebanon where he is being held as a suspect in the murder.

Hariri's assassination, which many Lebanese blame on Syria, was the
catalyst for mass anti-Syrian street protests and intensified
international pressure that forced Syria to withdraw its army from
Lebanon, ending nearly three decades of domination.