The panel investigating the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri operated with full autonomy, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday, one day after he transmitted the panel's first report to the Security Council.

"The secretary-general has insisted throughout the process on the importance of the independence of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission led by Mr. Detlev Mehlis," a spokesman for Annan said in a statement.

"This is his investigation. This is his report," the spokesman stressed, referring to Mehlis, a veteran German prosecutor appointed in May to lead the probe into the Feb. 14 murder of Hariri in Beirut.

The statement noted that the secretary-general "at no time made any attempt to influence the content of the report."

Mehlis echoed this view in his own statement released in response to questions raised in the media about the drafting process. "No one outside my team played any role in the drafting or preparation of the report," he said.

Compared withe the original copy, submitted to Annan Thursday morning, there are some key changes in the final edited version presented to the Security Council that night.

In the initial copy, two very senior Syrian officials -- Military Intelligence chief Assef Shawkat, Syrian President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law, as well as the president's own brother, Maher, are mentioned by a witness as having helped plan Rafik Hariri's assassination. However, in the final draft, the names were removed.

In his statement, Mehlis said he took responsibility for all editorial changes during the two weeks when the report had been prepared. He provided a detailed account of the events leading up to the time when the document was distributed to members of the Security Council.

Mehlis underscored that after being informed that the report would be made public, he had instituted a rule, in keeping with established legal procedures and prosecutorial principles, that any person named in witness testimony should not be named in the report unless that person has been charged with a crime related to the assassination.

"I have endeavored to ensure that all other names have been redacted from the report, the early drafts of which naturally included more information than was meant to end up in its final version," he said.

The statement also emphasized that the report, as a matter of necessity, does not represent the full product of the investigation, which included more than 16,000 pages of technical documents and the statements of more than 450 witnesses.

The commission has given that evidence to the Lebanese authorities for them to use as they complete the investigation, Mehlis said.

Mehlis is scheduled to brief the Security Council next Tuesday.

Source: Xinhua