BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon has charged with murder a key Syrian witness detained in France over the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, judicial sources said on Tuesday.

French police detained Mohammed Zuhair al-Siddiq, a witness in a U.N. inquiry into the Hariri's February killing, on Sunday on an international warrant.

Lebanese judicial sources said they had asked for Siddiq's detention on the murder charges because they believed he had an indirect role in Hariri's killing and had misled international investigators.

Siddiq faces the same charges as four pro-Syrian generals detained since August on the recommendation of chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis and charged with murder, attempted murder and carrying out a terrorist act in connection with Hariri's assassination, they said.

Lebanon has asked that Siddiq be extradited but was awaiting a French decision on the issue, they added.

French judicial sources said on Monday Beirut had 30 days to provide the necessary documents for the extradition request.

When he presents his report to the United Nations this week, Mehlis is expected to implicate Syrian officials in an assassination that plunged Lebanon into its worst security crisis since a 1975-1990 civil war. It stirred international pressure that led ultimately to the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon where it had long played a power broking role.

SYRIAN DENIES ROLE

Lebanese political sources say Siddiq was one of the leading witnesses in the probe, having said he attended meetings at which Hariri's killing was discussed, but became a suspect when it transpired he had misled investigators.

Lebanese newspapers reported that suspicions had been raised when Siddiq told investigators he was nearby when the bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 others went off.

Syrian officials have privately said from the start that Siddiq was unreliable and was wanted in his own country on charges of fraud and desertion.

Last week, Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan was found dead in his office, his apparent suicide coming three weeks after he was questioned by the U.N. team probing Hariri's death.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in a CNN interview conducted shortly before Kanaan's death that his country was not involved in Hariri's death and that he could never have ordered the murder.

Should the United Nations conclude Syrians were involved, the people so implicated would be "traitors" who would face an international court or Syrian justice, he said. (Reuters)