10thlead, ATTENTION - ADDS UN investigator's press conference Thursday ///

BEIRUT, Aug 30 (AFP) - Lebanese justice officials Tuesday handed over for questioning four pro-Syrian security officials including the current head of the presidential guard to a UN probe into the killing of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

The four including General Mustafa Hamdan -- who turned himself in to the UN investigators -- have been questioned since dawn as "suspects," Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said in a televised speech.

"The internal security forces ... brought the former director general of general security General Jamil el-Sayed, former director of internal security General Ali el-Hage and former army intelligence director General Raymond Azar to the commission headquarters for questioning," Justice Minister Charles Rizk said in a statement.

The three officials all resigned amid public fury over the Hariri assassination.

Arrest warrants were also issued against Majed Hamdan, the head of a security company, an officer in the presidential guard and two officers of the state security services, LBCI television reported.

Rizk said the move came at the request of the international commission headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis investigating the massive Beirut bomb blast that killed Hariri on February 14.

Mehlis will hold a press conference in Beirut Thursday about the arrests, Japan's UN envoy Kenzo Oshima said at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday.

The five men "are expected to be referred Wednesday" before a court "with the text of their depositions", according to the press agency ANI. However they could theoretically be held for up to four days before being released or charged.

Former pro-Damascus minister Nasser Qandil broke off a visit to the Syrian capital to appear before the inquiry commission.

The former security chiefs are the first major figures brought in for questioning in the probe into Hariri's killing, which plunged Lebanon into turmoil and increased the pressure on Syria to pull out its troops in April.

According to Future TV, owned by the family of Hariri, the arrests follow the discovery on July 27 of an arms cache in the Mazraa district of Beirut and at Bchamoun in the mountains, east of the capital. "This is the start of the process of uncovering the truth, and other arrests will follow," MP Saad Hariri, the slain prime minister's son, told Radio-Orient from Paris.

The assassination of the billionaire five-time premier was blamed by many in Lebanon on long-time powerbroker Syria and its allies in the Lebanese government at the time.

Damascus has also come under mounting international criticism over a failure to cooperate with the UN probe, which has questioned more than 240 people since it was created in April.

Hamdan, who was appointed by Damascus protege President Emile Lahoud shortly after he took office in 1998, was in June questioned as a suspect and his office and house searched by the UN team investigating the murder.

Lahoud himself has long denied allegations of complicity in the assassination and resisted pressure to stand down.

The president played down the questioning of the five security officials, in a meeting with a US congressional delegation, Lahoud's office said in a statement.

"Nobody has been arrested. It's just part of the ongoing inquiry, but the media are talking of arrests for domestic political reasons," the president said.

Lahoud also paid tribute to Hamdan as "one of the best officers in the Lebanese army" and said that the general had saved his life in 1983 during the civil war.

But MP Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, said Lahoud himself was likely to have to stand down as the truth unravels about the assassination.

"I think the countdown has started and I expect the fall of important figures in Lebanon and abroad," he told Radio-Orient. "I don't think he will be able to continue as president of Lebanon."

Hariri's killing paved the way for legislative elections in May and June which for the first time saw anti-Syrian politicians dominate parliament.

But since the Hariri attack, there have been 11 bomb blasts in Lebanon, and several anti-Syrian figures including a politician and a journalist have been killed.

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