Saudi and Syrian leaders to meet

The Saudi and Syrian leaders were to meet in Riyadh on Sunday as tensions rise in Lebanon over the fate of the UN probe into the 2005 assassination of former premier Rafiq Hariri.

The meeting between King Abdullah and President Bashar Al Assad comes on the heels of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two-day visit to Lebanon, where he underlined his support for the Shia militant group Hezbollah.

Analysts said the key issue for Assad and Abdullah was current Prime Minister Saad Hariri's dispute with Hezbollah over the UN-backed tribunal on his father's murder.

Members of Hezbollah are reportedly implicated in the investigation, and could be indicted, according to reports.

The two leaders are also expected to discuss the stalemate over the formation of a government in Iraq, more than seven months after an inconclusive parliamentary election.

Hariri was in Saudi Arabia on a family visit on Sunday, but Lebanese officials said he was not scheduled to join Abdullah and Assad in their discussions.

Mustafa Alani, a regional security expert at the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai, said Lebanon would probably be the focus of the meeting.

"We have a major crisis over the future of the international court on the Hariri case," he said.

Reports that the tribunal would indict Hezbollah members for Rafiq Hariri's murder have raised regional fears of renewed Sunni-Shia sectarian violence and the collapse of Lebanon's hard-won national unity government.

While Hariri has offered to play down any indictment linked to his rivals Hezbollah and focus only on the individuals involved, the militant group has demanded the international tribunal be discredited.

The Saudis, strong backers of Hariri, a fellow Sunni, and Syria, which is close to Hezbollah, both have strong influence in Lebanon.

The Riyadh meeting follows a landmark July 30 summit in Baabda, Lebanon between Assad, Abdullah and Hariri aimed at maintaining peace in the deeply divided eastern Mediterranean country.

"I think what they (Abdullah and Assad) have managed so far is to keep a lid on quite alarming rising tensions in the Lebanese community," said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre think-tank.

"I don't think it's in the interest of either these two countries or others for Lebanon to erupt into conflagration," he said, adding that they could try to limit the fallout from indictments in the Hariri murder case.

Alani was not optimistic about the outcome of Sunday's talks. "I don't see any compromise here for Hariri, and I don't see the Saudis going for anything but the international court," he said.

The Abdullah-Assad talks are also likely to cover Iraq's political stalemate, likewise underscored by Sunni-Shia tensions.

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