UNITED NATIONS – The Treasury Department yesterday named the brother-in-law of President al Assad of Syria, Assef Shawkat, a “Specially Designated National,” adding him to a list of terrorists and their supporters whose assets in America are frozen. Americans will also be prohibited from conducting any transactions with Mr. Shawkat.

Separately, Mr. Shawkat, who belongs to the Baathist regime’s inner circle, was named as a suspect by U.N. investigators probing the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The Treasury Department did not link its action yesterday to the February 2005 Hariri killing, citing instead terror events that, for the most part, took place prior to the assassination.

“As the Director of Syrian Military Intelligence, Shawkat has been a key architect of Syria’s domination of Lebanon, as well as a fundamental contributor to Syria’s long-standing policy to foment terrorism against Israel,” the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Stuart Levey, said in a statement.

The department’s statement notes Mr. Shawkat’s ties to Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian Arab organizations designated by Washington as terrorist groups. As Syria’s intelligence chief, his “broad internal and external responsibilities include working with terrorist organizations resident in Syria and overseeing the Syrian security presence in Lebanon,” the department said in a press release.

The designation is the equivalent of a “civil action, not a criminal action,” the department’s spokeswoman, Molly Millerwise, told The New York Sun. But it coincides with a critical transition in the criminal probe into the Hariri killing, ordered by the U.N. Security Council. A U.N. official told the Sun yesterday that next week the head of that investigation, Detlev Mehlis of Germany, will officially pass the baton to his successor, Serge Brammertz of Belgium, during a press conference in Beirut. The two have been communicating “daily,” the official said.

It is “very important that Commissioner Bremmertz get off to a fast start,” America’s U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, told reporters yesterday. “The government of Syria [must] begin to cooperate as they are required to do rather than obstruct the commission’s work.”

Perhaps as result of the growing international pressure, President al Assad yesterday announced he would free five political prisoners, jailed for the last five years for their role in what some called “the Damascus spring.”

“This is a very good development,” a human rights campaigner and ex-prisoner, Michel Kilo, told London’s Daily Telegraph. “We have been waiting for this for a very long time,” he said, adding, however, “We have to repeat for the millionth time that there is no justification for keeping anyone behind bars for expressing his or her thoughts.”

In addition, the Arab press recently reported that Syria and Saudi Arabia were considering a joint initiative on Lebanon, calling for shared security coordination between Beirut and Damascus, diplomatic recognition, and demarcation of their shared border.

But the Associated Press yesterday quoted the independence-minded Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, as saying that the initiative “does not fulfill Lebanese aspirations,” adding that the “ideas” relayed by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal “do not solve the current problems.”