UNITED NATIONS - Senior officials in the Syrian security services most likely approved the murder of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, a UN commission probing the assassination has concluded.

The commission's report released Thursday cited "converging evidence" of Syrian and Lebanese involvement and accused Damascus of blocking and misleading the investigation.

"There is probable cause to believe that the decision to assassinate ... could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials and could not have been further organised without the collusion of their counterparts in the Lebanese security services," the report said.

The document was delivered to UN chief Kofi Annan by German magistrate Detlev Mehlis, who led the commission's four-month investigation into the massive bomb blast that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut last February.

It was also sent to the 15 members of the UN Security Council as well as to the Lebanese government before being made public late Thursday.

A US State Department spokesman said there would be no public reaction from Washington until the report had been closely studied.

US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton called the commission's conclusions "clearly troubling."

In Lebanon, news of the report drew renewed calls for the resignation of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who he denied claims by the commission that he received a phone call from a key suspect minutes before the bomb blast that killed Hariri.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an interview with CNN last week said neither he nor his government were involved in the assassination: "This is against our principles and my principles. I would never do such a thing in my life ... It is not my nature to threaten anybody."

The slaying touched off an international outcry and led many in Lebanon to point the finger at Damascus, hastening Syria's departure from its smaller neighbor in April after a 29-year military presence.

Damascus has strenuously denied any involvement in or prior knowledge of the murder, but the UN report said Syria's pervasive military intelligence presence in Lebanon made such denials ring hollow.

"It would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge," the report said.

"Many leads point directly towards Syrian security officials as being involved with the assassination," it said, calling on Syria to clarify "a considerable part" of the unresolved questions.

Describing Syrian cooperation with the probe as a matter of form rather than substance, the UN commission said a number of interviewees had even tried to deliberately mislead the investigation.

In particular, it noted that a letter addressed to the Mehlis panel by Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara proved to contain "false information."

"If the investigation is to be completed, it is essential that the government of Syria fully cooperate," said the commission, which interviewed more than 400 people and reviewed 60,000 documents.

The 54-page report noted that a number of witnesses had voiced fears that they would be harmed for cooperating with the probe.

The assassination, it said, was carried out by a group "with an extensive organisation and considerable resources" and had clearly been prepared over the course of several months.

"Through the constant wire-tapping of Mr Hariri's telephone lines, the Syrian and Lebanese security and intelligence services were kept informed of his movements and contacts," it said.

The commission recommended that the investigation now be taken forward by the appropriate Lebanese judicial and security authorities.

At the same time, Annan said in letter to Security Council members that he intended -- following a Lebanese request -- to extend the commission's mandate until December 15.

Ahead of the release of the report, Damascus braced for a push for UN sanctions by Western countries.

Syria's deputy foreign minister, Walid Mouallem, told France's Le Figaro newspaper Thursday that he believed the United States and France had a plan to increase pressure on Syria and that the Mehlis report was "the instrument to execute that plan."

He said that, after encouraging other Arab countries to urge Syria to "cut our relations with Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, we are now at the second stage, which aims to isolate us.

"The next stage will be the imposition of economic sanctions through a United Nations resolution. But we think that the Russians and the Chinese will oppose these sanctions," he added.

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