Damascus/Cairo - Syrian Foreign Ministry advisor Riyad Dawoudi has reportedly met with U.N. chief investigator Detlev Mehlis in Barcelona, a foreign ministry source confirmed Saturday.

The meeting is said to have taken place on Friday but no details were revealed.

Mehlis has asked the Syrian government to send six senior officers to Beirut for questioning in relation with the probe into Hariri's death.

Syria however has refused and proposed that the interviews be conducted at other locations outside Lebanon. Suggested alternative locations include the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, the headquarters of the U.N. observer force (UNDOF) in Syria or the U.N. offices in Vienna and Geneva.

Speaking earlier in the week, Syria's ambassador to the U.N., Fayssal Mekdad said his country had turned down Mehlis' request on the grounds that sending the six officials to Lebanon could pose problems between the two countries.

In other developments Saturday, a committee appointed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to probe Hariri\'s murder asked Turkish legal authorities for assistance.

The committee has requested the handover of statements made by Syrian national Luai al-Saka, who allegedly testified in Turkey that he had been offered money for a false testimony incriminating Assad's brother-in-law, Asef Shawkat, head of Syria\'s military intelligence.

Committee spokesman Ibrahim al-Daradchi said in Damascus that al- Saka had been arrested in Turkey for planning bomb attacks on ships anchored off the Turkish coast with Israeli tourists aboard.

During interrogation, al-Saka said that while he was in prison four men, who spoke English and Turkish, had asked him if he could secure a suicide-bomb attacker from Iraq to kill Hariri.

Hariri and 22 other people died in a bomb attack in Beirut on February 14 this year. Several Syrian intelligence chiefs including Shawkat are under suspicion.

Meanwhile, 500 students took to the streets of Damascus Saturday shouting, \'we will not bow to anyone except God,\' in a show of solidarity with al-Assad. They claim that the results of the U.N. probe are false.

The U.N. Security Council passed resolution 1636 in late October threatening Syria with sanctions if the government failed to cooperate with Mehlis team. (DPA)