MOSCOW - Sanctions against Syria over the death of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri would be bad for the whole world, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said Sunday.

Speaking in Arabic on Russian television al-Assad asked what the countries pressing for sanctions would gain, according to the Russian translation of his remarks, adding that they would lose, not win.

He was answering questions about the inquiry into the death of Hariri, over which five senior Syrian officials have been interrogated in the United Nations offices in Vienna.

Detlev Mehlis, the German magistrate heading the inquiry into the killing of Hariri in a huge explosion in Beirut last February, is due to report to the UN Security Council in the coming days.

Al-Assad said that the Middle East was the heart of the world and Syria the heart of the Middle East; and if the situation in Syria and Iraq was not good the region would be unstable and the whole world would pay.

He said he would severely punish anyone close to him or any military officer implicated in the killing.

An interim report by Mehlis implicated Lebanese and Syrian officials in the Beirut bomb blast.

Afterward, it took weeks for Syria to agree on Vienna as a neutral venue for the UN panel's questioning of Syrian officials.

Al -Assad warned that any military or political error in the region would precipitate chaos which could reach Russia's southern borders.

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