UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations yesterday sent legal officials to Lebanon, with an eye to future trials of suspects in the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The move came as Belgian Serge Brammertz began his stint as the new head of the U.N. Security Council-mandated team investigating well as “others to be tried by a tribunal of an international character,” Mr. Dujarric said.

“We are in an early stage,” a member of Mr. Michel’s team on his way to Beirut, Mark Quarterman, told The New York Sun. While U.N. officials have some ideas on what form the cooperation between international legal bodies and the Lebanese court system will take, he said, “we are mostly going to hear what the Lebanese have to say.”

The council passed a resolution in December calling on Secretary-General Annan to extend assistance to the government of Lebanon, which requested international help in setting up trial venues for possible suspects in a string of political assassinations that followed the Hariri murder, and which were seen as part of the aftermath of Syria’s mandated departure from Lebanon.

Since December, according to several officials familiar with the negotiations, American and French diplomats pressed Mr. Annan to send a team to Beirut that would not only provide le gal expertise, but also show the Lebanese public that the trials will have full international backing. Mr. Annan decided to send his team this week, after Mr. Brammertz replaced the German investigator Detlev Mehlis at the head of the Hariri criminal probe.

Yesterday a Lebanese newspaper, the Daily Star, quoted local “judicial sources” as saying Mr. Brammertz “has told Lebanese officials whom he met since his arrival in Beirut last Thursday that he has enough evidence and information from the files he received from Mehlis to determine and pin those involved in Hariri’s assassination.” But a spokesperson for the U.N. investigation team denied that Mr. Brammertz made such a statement, according to the newspaper.

Last year, Mr. Mehlis wrote a report implicating several Lebanese and Syrian officials in the Hariri killing, including President Assad’s brother, Maher, and brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat. The names, however, were redacted from the final draft of the Mehlis report. Additionally, several Lebanese members of the Syrian-influenced security apparatus were arrested by Lebanese authorities after being fingered by Mr. Mehlis. As of yet nobody has been charged officially in any of the assassinations.