SAO PAULO - A Lebanese women suspected of having financed the assassination in 2005 of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq Hariri slashed her wrist in an apparent suicide attempt in a Brazilian jail, police said.

Rana Abdul Rahim Qoleilat, 39, was found early Wednesday inside her cell in Sao Paolo "with a cut on her left wrist", an officer said.

"It appears to have been a suicide attempt."

Qoleilat had been transferred to a city hospitalfor emergency treatment and would spend Wednesday night "under observation" at the police Special Operations unit, he said.

Lebanon said Wednesday it would ask Brazil to extradite the suspect, who was arrested Sunday in her hotel room in Sao Paulo,onan Interpol warrant relating to bank fraud charges.

Brazil's ambassador to Beirut, Eduardo de Seixas, said after meeting Wednesday with Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallouk that while neither country had ratified the extradition treaty they signed in 2002, this did "not constitute an obstacle".

A United Nations commission investigating Hariri's murder suspects Qoleilat of providing financial help, directly or indirectly, to the powerful politician's assassins.

Qoleilat is a former top executive at Lebanon's Al-Madina Bank, which collapsed in 2003 in one of the country's biggest banking scandals.

She fled the country after being released from jail. Interpol accuses Qoleilat of defrauding the bank of 1.2 million dollars.

When she was arrested in Sao Paolo, after police received an anonymous tip-off, she was carrying a false British passport and reportedly tried to bribe police.

But her lawyer said this was a misunderstanding that arose because Qoleilat did not speak good Portuguese.

Hariri was killed along with 20 other people in a massive bomb blast in Beirut on February 14, 2005.

UN officials have said intelligence agents from Syria -- the longtime powerbroker in Lebanon -- are a prime suspect in the assassination.

Qoleilat is suspected of having financed Roustom Ghazaleh, the former head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, as well as Lebanese intelligence services.

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