Don’t watch today’s Security Council discussion on Syria expecting any meaningful leadership from Secretary-General Annan. The United Nations report on Syria, done by the German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, was an opportunity for Mr. Annan to get into this war on the right side. But the editing that was done on Mr. Mehlis’s report, disclosed by the accidental leak of the red-lined version of the report over the weekend, suggests that Mr. Annan or those around him are being brought into this matter reluctantly.

As our Benny Avni reported yesterday, the most important editing of the Mehlis report was the deletion of the names of top Syrian officials, including President al-Assad’s brother and brother-in-law, implicated by one unnamed witness. Both Mr. Annan and Mr. Mehlis claim the changes were made by Mr. Mehlis and not Mr. Annan. But it remains highly suspect that an effort to water down Syrian culpability, for no apparent reason other than sympathy with the Assad regime, took place in the secretary general’s office.

Not even the editing that was done could dampen the Syrian culpability presented in the report. Paragraph 123 of the 60-page report concludes: “There is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security official and could not have been further organized without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services.”

In his report Mr. Mehlis quotes documents, recorded conversations, and witnesses that show how Mr. Assad’s disagreement with Hariri about Syria’s influence in Lebanon can be linked to the assassination, and the likely role Syrian officials played in the murder.

It would be a mistake to accept Syria’s handing over some top officials for trial as an end to the matter. In a top-down dictatorship like Syria it’s extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that a decision of the magnitude of murdering a prime minister of another state was not approved by Mr. Assad.

Some of Mr. Assad’s apologists portray him as a softer man than his father, struggling to keep at bay the hardliners in his inner circle, and will no doubt try to play this murder as such a case. But the report shows a different Mr. Assad. It quotes a number of Lebanese witnesses saying that Mr. Assad threatened Hariri to “break Lebanon over your head” if Hariri didn’t support the extension of the term of Syria’s puppet president in Lebanon, Emile Lahoud. The report shows Mr. Assad is his father’s son in all his brutality.

The Hariri murder can be added to a long list of misdeeds by Mr. Assad. He supports terrorist organizations and provides bases to the forces killing coalition troops in Iraq. Mr. Assad is one of the region’s most dangerous men who isn’t in hiding. It’s not as if another reason was needed for action to be taken against the Assad regime in the form of greater support for democracy activists, but it’s there now. Just don’t expect Mr. Annan to have any Pauline revelation on the road to Damascus.