The probe led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis named as suspects in the February 14 killing members of the inner circle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including his brother-in-law.

The report said Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara gave investigators false information and accused top pro-Syrian Lebanese officials of a major role in the killing, with suspicion cast even on President Emile Lahoud.

Syria dismissed the charges as "far from the truth," while Lahoud denied them and indicated he would not be driven from office despite calls for him to resign.

The United States and its allies appeared to be laying the ground for economic sanctions on Syria, whose decades of domination of its small neighbor Lebanon was strongly opposed by Hariri.

A report submitted to the 15-nation Security Council said there was probable cause to believe the decision to kill Hariri could not have been taken "without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security official[s]" nor carried out without the complicity of Lebanese security services.

But it said the probe was still incomplete. In a letter accompanying the report, Secretary General Kofi Annan extended the team's work until December 15. But it looked set to start the ball rolling for diplomatic action against Syria, already isolated over US-led charges of meddling in Iraq and Lebanon.

The US, France and Britain have been discussing possible UN resolutions as a follow-up to the report, but no text had been drafted, diplomats said.

Diplomats in Lebanon said economic sanctions could be on the table when the council meets Tuesday to discuss the report.

Washington was studying the report - which did not call for the arrests of any of the officials mentioned - and would decide in days how to proceed, said Washington's ambassador to the UN, John Bolton.

In Damascus, Syrian Information Minister Mahdi Dakhl-Allah blasted it.

The report is "a political statement directed towards Syria," he said. "The report is far from the truth. It was not professional and will not arrive at the truth but will be part of a deception and great tension in this region."

Hariri was a strong critic of Syria's domination of Lebanon, and many Lebanese have long suspected a link between his killing and the Syrian authorities and their Lebanese allies.

His murder along with those of 20 other people in a suicide truck bombing in a Beirut street sparked international outrage and Lebanese protests that led to Syria ending its 29-year military presence in the country.

Investigators presented evidence that Assad's powerful brother-in-law, Major General Asef Shawkat, could have figured in the plot, setting up militant Ahmed Abu Adass as a decoy by forcing him to admit to the murder on video weeks before it took place.

According to one unidentified witness cited in the report, Shawkat and Assad's brother, Maher Assad, were among a group of Syrian and Lebanese security officials who "decided to assassinate" Hariri in mid-September 2004 and then planned the murder during a series of meetings in Damascus.

Their names were edited out of the final document but were visible in an earlier draft.

The report said the Syrian authorities, after initially hesitating to help, had cooperated "to a limited degree."

But several individuals had tried to mislead investigators "by giving false or inaccurate statements," it said. Even a letter addressed to the commission by Foreign Minister Shara "proved to contain false information."

Shara's deputy, Walid al-Moualem, also lied in a statement to investigators about what was said during a meeting with Hariri on February 1, it said.

REUTERS