President Bashar al-Assad promised on Thursday to cooperate with a UN inquiry into the killing of a former Lebanese prime minister, but said Syria would not sacrifice its own national interests in the process.
The young leader, in a defiant speech carried live on Syrian television, made clear he believed the UN mission was part of a wider international effort to force Damascus to its knees.
"No matter what we do and how much we cooperate, the result after a month will be that 'Syria did not cooperate'... but we have to do our duty," he said at Damascus University.
Soon after Assad's speech, French President Jacques Chirac urged Syria to cooperate with the inquiry and said France would support imposing sanctions on Damascus unless it did so.
Reiterating that Syria had no hand in the February 14 killing of Rafik al-Hariri, Assad said he would not let co-operation with the UN investigation damage Syria's security and stability.
"The issue is not criminal any more, let's not waste time thinking about this. Syria is not involved either on a state level or on individual one," he said in a 75-minute speech delivered largely without notes.
He did not refer directly to a request by chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis to question six Syrian officials in Lebanon. They include Assef Shawkat, the president's powerful brother-in-law and military intelligence chief.
Assad said Syria had done its best to secure its border with Iraq, not just in response to US requests but in its own interests. He invited Iraq's president and prime minister to Syria, saying Damascus was committed to helping stabilise its neighbour.
The United States accuses Syria of allowing foreign insurgents to cross its border into Iraq, supporting Palestinian and Lebanese militants, and continued meddling in Lebanon.
Mehlis has until December 15 to complete his inquiry and report to the Security Council. In an interim report last month he criticised Syria for not co-operating properly with his mission.
That report spoke of evidence pointing to Syrian and Lebanese involvement in Hariri's killing and said it would be hard to imagine how such a plot could have gone ahead without the knowledge of Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services.
Assad dismissed the report as politically motivated and spoke bitterly about last month's Security Council resolution, which threatened Syria with unspecified action unless it co-operated fully with the Mehlis investigation.
"We are ready to cooperate within a framework that will lead to uncovering the crime," he said. But any co-operation would stop short of "killing ourselves under pressure", he added.
"We support international legitimacy but not at the expense of our national interests."
Assad said Mehlis had rejected a recent invitation to visit Damascus to discuss co-operation. Syria issued the invitation after Mehlis demanded to interview the six officials in Lebanon.
Syria said on Wednesday its own inquiry committee was questioning the six men, effectively preventing them from going to Lebanon to see Mehlis's team until that process is over.
Shawkat, who is married to Assad's sister Bushra, was among 10 Syrian officials interviewed by the UN team in Damascus in September. His name appeared in Mehlis's interim report.
Damascus has come under fierce international pressure since Hariri's killing. It has already had to pull its troops out of neighbouring Lebanon, ending a 29-year military presence.
Assad accused Hariri supporters, who are now a majority in parliament, of exploiting his killing for political ends.
"We used to hear attacks against Syria under the slogan of Syrian tutelage in Lebanon," he said.
"The truth is those people, or most of them, are blood merchants. They created a market out of Hariri's blood and this market makes money and creates positions. Everything has a price, every position has a price and every television hour has a price."
In an unprecedented assault on Lebanon's government, Assad accused Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a close ally of Hariri, of allowing Syria's enemies to use the country, even though Hariri himself had co-operated fully with Damascus while in office.
Assad vowed to be steadfast and urged Syrians to close ranks around his government.