Chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis said Thursday he was "optimistic" about Syrian President Bashar al Assad's nod to interrogate five senior Syrian security officials in connection with ex-Premier Rafik Hariri's assassination.
Mehlis, a German prosecutor, told a news conference he held in Lebanon that he believed more people could be involved in the killing than the four pro-Syrian suspects already identified and detained. The fifth, Nasser Kandil, has been freed but remained a suspect.
"The five suspects we have arrested, in our assessment, are only part of the picture," Mehlis conveyed. "So we'll have to investigate further and we do think more people are involved."
When asked about the cooperation U.N. investigators had received from Damascus, Mehlis said that there had been "problems" but was "optimistic that these problems can be overcome.
"They will have to be solved because without their (Syria's) cooperation we will not have the full picture," he said, adding he was willing to visit Syria to meet officials there. "But I want to assert that we have no Syrian suspect up to this moment."
