UN office doctored report on murder of Hariri


Best story of the week.

The Word document which shows the deletions :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/syria/mehlis.report.doc

People are out in the streets of Damascus in orchestrated outrage against the report with the conspirators names removed. The idea seems to be to rubbish it "on the Arab street" as a work of fiction or a politcal tract.

What do they think of the original one which mentions Assad's brother by name? Now everyone including Syrian dissidents have seen the writing on the wall. The arguemt seems to be: Don't make the Syrian people suffer by imposing sanctions. And that if the Ba'thists think they are in a corner they might do something desperate. What exactly?


::

I remember staying in a hotel in Aleppo as a kid (196-7?). In the evening we went on the roof to enjoy the sunsetting.

At breakfast, I said to my mother, noticing the red fez's the waiters were wearing: "Monkeys wear those!" Mother shushed me. Father was driving us from London back to Baghdad during a biannual leave.

  ¶ Monday, October 24, 2005