Russia on Tuesday urged Syria to render full-scale cooperation with the international commission in probing the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was killed in a bomb attack in February.

Russia is convinced that "the responsible cooperation of Damascus with the commission will help answer the remaining questions in the Hariri case, establish the truth and guarantee the triumph of justice," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statement was released after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attended on Monday a UN Security Council session which unanimously passed a resolution on the investigation into the murder of Hariri, according to the Interfax news agency.

The UN resolution urged Syria to cooperate with the probing commission in the investigation.

"The Security Council strongly favored a full-scale and effective dialogue between Syria and international investigators, which Russia had consistently advocated," the ministry's document said, adding that the watered-down text put the accent on peaceful resolution of the crisis.

Russia regards the interaction between the two sides as "an important prerequisite for easing tension in relations between Syria and Lebanon, and in the Middle East as a whole," said the statement.

"The threat of automatic sanctions against Syria as a state was removed.Attempts to accuse Damascus without any proof of involvement in terrorist activities were set aside," the foreign ministry said in the statement.

"It is especially important that the adopted resolution confirms the need to resolve the situation peacefully," it added.

But Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara on Monday went before the UN Security Council and angrily rejected the resolution.

Reports from the United Nations said diplomats expressed shock at al-Shara's response to the resolution that threatened possible "further measures" if Syria doesn't start cooperating fully with the probe into the Feb. 14 bombing, which killed Hariri and 20 others.

They said his statement underscored Syria's isolation and highlighted the necessity for a warning to Damascus.

The resolution, co-sponsored by the United States, Britain and France, requires Syria to detain anyone whom UN investigators consider a suspect in Hariri's assassination.

The investigators, led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, had concluded that Hariri's slaying was unlikely to have occurred without a senior Syrian approval.

Source: Xinhua