In a "memorandum" to UN Secretary-General Ban Ban Ki-moon obtained on Wednesday by The Associated Press, Gen. Jamil El Sayed said he and seven other Lebanese were arbitrarily arrested for political reasons and have been held for more than 2 1/2 years without being charged or confronted with any evidence. El Sayed is one of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals under arrest in the February 2005 bombing that killed Rafik Hariri and 22 others. The four other Lebanese were not identified in the letter.

The UN's new chief investigator into the assassination said he would not comment on the allegations. A previous investigator has said there were "indications" the generals were involved in the murder. In the memorandum, El Sayed urged the UN chief to "defend justice and international norms by putting an end to this arbitrary and political detention as soon as possible." Otherwise, he said, the credibility of the UN, the Security Council and the UN commission investigating Hariri's assassination "will be jeopardized."

The new chief investigator, Daniel Bellemare, briefed the UN Security Council Tuesday on the Hariri investigation and was asked by Russia about the continued detention of the four generals -- and later by journalists about El Sayed's allegations. The general sent copies of his memorandum to council members.

"I will not comment on allegations," Bellemare replied.

El Sayed claimed that three months prior to his arrest an investigator from the UN commission asked him to transmit a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad "which was meant to persuade him to present to the commission a Syrian victim of a certain caliber, who would confess to the crime and would eventually be found dead." This would allow for an agreement with Syria similar to the one with Libya in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, he said.

A Libyan intelligence agent and a Libyan airline official were tried for the bombing and the intelligence agent was convicted, though a Scottish judicial commission said last June that new evidence indicates a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. El Sayed said he told the UN investigator that he could not transmit such a message unless he was provided evidence "pointing in the direction of a Syrian involvement in the crime, otherwise the Syrians would consider that he is leading them to a trap."

The general said the investigator replied that the commission did not have such evidence and insisted that if he did not transmit the message for a Syrian to admit to the crime he would be blamed for the assassination. Syria denies any involvement in the Hariri assassination, but the furor over the attack forced Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanon after a 29-year presence.

El Sayed said the proposal to talk to Syria's Assad was made before and after his arrest on Aug. 30, 2005. "These facts are documented with evidence and proofs" which he said he gave the commission. Bellemare said the generals' detention is the result of a decision by Lebanese judicial authorities, "pursuant to Lebanese criminal law." He said he has provided Lebanese authorities "with the evidence that we have" but he refused to disclose any of his discussions with the country's prosecutor general.

The UN commission's first chief investigator, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis who is now a judge, defended the arrest of the four generals in an interview last month with the private Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation television as "legally and fully justified." -AP