NEW YORK, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- The United States and France pushed a U.N. resolution to force Syria to aid the investigation of the slaying of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
U.S. President George Bush called for a U.N. Security Council vote next Monday on the resolution to compel Syria's cooperation in the Feb. 14 car-bomb killings or impose isolation, The Washington Post reported.
"We want people to be held to account," Bush said in an interview with al-Arabiya TV. "The Syrian government must take the demands of the free world very seriously."
However, Security Council members such as Algeria, China and Russia balked at adopting the resolution before Detlev Mehlis, a German prosecutor leading the U.N. investigation, completes his work Dec. 15.
France favored building a consensus to win greater Security Council support.
Mehlis' preliminary report concluded senior Syrian officials likely were behind the deaths of Hariri and 22 other people.
