TWO members of Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah have been named by a UN tribunal following a six-year investigation into the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister.
Confirmation that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon has identified Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim organisation, is certain to antagonise sectarian relations in Lebanon, already frayed by three months of anti-regime violence in neighboring Syria.
"We should set the country's peace above all else as the indictments are not judgments," said Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati after the release of the names.
"The sensitivity of the circumstances calls on us to act reasonably to prevent those seeking to create strife from achieving their goals."
Three officials from the tribunal, based in the Netherlands, delivered the indictments to Said Mirza, Lebanon's prosecutor-general, who is supposed to arrest the suspects.
Although the names were meant to remain secret for 30 days, they quickly leaked, British newspaper The Times reported.
They include Mustafa Badreddine, a senior Hezbollah official and brother-in-law of Imad Mughniyah, Hizbollah's military commander who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008.
According to sources close to the judiciary, Badreddine operates under the alias of Sami Issa, a Lebanese Christian, and planned the murder.
Among the others named were Salim Ayyash, the reported head of Hizbollah's "execution unit," Hassan Aneissy, known as Hassan Issa, and Assad Sabra.
Saad Hariri, the victim's son and himself a former prime minister, said: "Together we witness a distinctive historic moment in the political, judicial, security and moral life of Lebanon."
He has been living in France in recent weeks after apparent death threats.
"Lebanon has paid the price of this moment, in decades of killings and assassinations without accountability," he added.
There was no immediate comment from Hizbollah, but it expected to shrug off the announcement. Last Friday Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, its leader, said the tribunal was no longer of any consequence.
Rafik Hariri died in a truck bombing in downtown Beirut in February 2005, the blast taking the lives of 22 others.
The Syrian regime was widely suspected of ordering his murder after a deep chill in relations with Damascus.
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