Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem denied on Sunday an allegation that he had threatened former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri days before his murder.

Al-Moualem made the denial in response to a UN report accusation that he threatened the former Lebanese premier in a conversation dated on Feb. 1.

"This is completely untrue. I did not go to Prime Minister Hariri to make threats," al-Moualem said in a talk show on Syrian state television.

"I went to him to inform him about my mission and ask him to cooperate in order for the mission to succeed," said Al-Moualem.

The UN investigation report released on Thursday by a independent inquiry team led by German prosecutor Detelev Mehlis said that according to a tape of the conversation between the two, Hariri complained that security services were waging a campaign against him.

The report said that al-Moualem told Hariri "we and the ( security) services here have put you into a corner."

Syria has been suspected of involvement in Hariri's death while Damascus strongly denied the allegation.

Also on Sunday, Syria's highest political body, the National Progressive Front, rejected the UN report as a distortion of the truth.

The front slammed that the report drawn up by German judge Detelev Mehlis is "full of contradictions and has distorted the truth and the facts."

Hariri was killed in a huge car bomb blast in Beirut on Feb. 14, which sparked massive anti-Syrian protests and led to Syrian troops' withdrawal from neighboring Lebanon in April after decades of military presence.

Mehlis was appointed in May by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to lead the investigation in both Lebanon and Syria and release the report in late October.

Mehlis' report said that there is "converging evidence" of both Syrian and Lebanese involvement in the Hariri assassination.

The probe has established "that many leads point directly toward Syrian security officials as being involved with the assassination," said the report.

It called on the Syrian authorities to cooperate with investigators. But the Syrian government has vehemently denied any involvement in the murder.

Source: Xinhua