UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 31 (UPI) — The United Nations has extended investigation of former Lebanon Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination into Syria, demanding full cooperation of Damascus. The Security Council Monday unanimously approved a tough resolution giving the U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission the same rights in Syria it already has in Lebanon. The measure said that if Syria’s cooperation does not meet the resolution’s requirements, "the council, if necessary, could consider further action."

Meeting at the ministerial level, the resolution also said the panel, headed up by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, may determine where and how it interviews Syrians and "insists that Syria not interfere in Lebanese domestic affairs." The measure calls on Syria to "detain those Syrian officials or individuals whom the commission considers as suspected of involvement in the planning, sponsoring, organizing or perpetrating of" the Feb. 14 bomb attack in Beirut on Hariri’s motorcade, killing the billionaire businessman and more than 20 other people.

 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and the foreign ministers of China, Li Zhao-Xing; France, Philippe Douste-Blazy, and Russia, Sergei Lavrov, the veto-wielding five permanent members of the council, led the list of 11 foreign ministers attending the session.

"The Syrian government, seriously and actively worked to break the will of the Lebanese people," Rice said of allegations in the Mehlis commission’s preliminary report delivered earlier this month on participation of high ranking Damascus security and intelligence officials. "Syria has isolated itself from the international community."

Straw said the Hariri attack recalled "the Medieval practice of political assassination."