us pushed a resolution through the Security Council demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarming of the Hizbollah militia. The response was not long in coming. In February, as the campaigning season opened for Lebanese elections, Hariri was blown up by a car bomb outside the St Georges hotel in Beirut. He was not the first Lebanese politician to suffer this fate -- two previous presidents, Bashir Gemayel in 1982 and Ren Moawad in 1989, had gone the same way without much commotion. This time, however, the un Secretary-General immediately convened a Commission of Enquiry, dispatching a German prosecutor armed with plenipotentiary powers to investigate the crime, which duly concluded that Syria was responsible. Since this was plain from the outset, all that the Commission has revealed is the extent to which the un , under the miserable figure of Annan, has become an automaton for the will of the West. For, of course, Israeli assassinations -- of leaders of Hizbollah, Fatah, Hamas -- have never raised a whisper of reproach in the Secretariat, let alone any commission of enquiry. The fate of Lumumba, Ben Barka, Guevara, Allende, Machel, says enough about the continuity of these Western traditions. In Lebanon itself, the killing of Hariri -- whose largesse had built a wide clientele -- provoked more genuine reactions, with vast demonstrations by the country's middle class demanding the expulsion of Syrian troops and police, while a host of Western organizations arrived to assist the progress of a Cedar Revolution.