Patrick seale: "assassination of Hariri is not grave international crime requiring judgement by a UN tribunal"

" ... French diplomacy has been attempting to persuade the Security Council to override local objections and set up the international tribunal under Chapter VII of the UN Charter -- the Chapter which allows the Council to resort to coercive measures ..." and "the trouble is that the assassination of Hariri -- heinous though it was -- cannot in law be credibly described as a grave international crime requiring judgement by a UN-created tribunal, on the model of the tribunals set up to try the perpetrators of the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, or those guilty of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Nor can the quarrel between pro- and anti-Syrian factions in Lebanon be described as a menace to peace of global proportions."

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