The United Nations came down hard yesterday in a toughly worded report which placed a good deal of blame on Syria for the recent assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

While the report did not explicitly accuse Damascus of pulling the trigger, it did say that Syria's interference in Lebanon created the polarizing tensions that led to Hariri's death and prevented the effectiveness of any local investigation into discovering who was responsible.

The report also states that according to a number of Hariri's aides, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad personally threatened Hariri's life the last time the two men met unless Hariri stopped calling for Lebanese independence from Syria.

The report concluded, 'It is clear that the assassination took place in a political and security context marked by an acute polarization around the Syrian influence in Lebanon and a failure of the Lebanese state to provide adequate protection for its citizens,' it said.

The U.N. report called for an independent, international investigation into the assassination. The Syrian backed Lebanese government had rejected all previous calls for an international investigation, claiming it would violate Lebanon's sovereignty. However, President Emile Lahoud appeared to give U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan the go ahead to hold the investigation.

Fayssal Mekdad, the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations was dismissive of the report. 'It seems to me that he deals only with the opposition and those who want to accuse Syria of something,' he said. 'He should have been more objective in analyzing the overall situation.'

While the U.N. report failed to say definitively who pulled the trigger, it made clear that plenty of blame belongs at Damascus's door in the killing of Lebanon's most revered political figure.