DAMASCUS - Syria said on Wednesday it wanted to lay fresh ground rules for cooperation with the new chief of a U.N. team investigating the killing of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

"We want to agree on a protocol for cooperation to identify the meaning of cooperation ... and what is required before it can be said that Syria has cooperated fully and unconditionally with the international committee," Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara told politicians from parties allied with the ruling Baath party.

A U.N. Security Council resolution ordered Syria in October to cooperate fully with the inquiry or face unspecified consequences, after outgoing chief investigator Detlev Mehlis said it was not doing enough.

Damascus requested a similar agreement in November from Mehlis as a precursor to allowing his team to question six Syrian officials in connection with the February car bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others.

Mehlis rejected such an agreement at the time but Damascus eventually allowed five of the officials to be questioned at U.N. offices in Vienna. Mehlis later identified those officials as suspects in the assassination.

Shara said there was no reason for the new chief investigator, expected to be Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz, not to sign such a deal when he takes over this month.

"Let us forget the former committee led by Mehlis. The new committee has no interest in not signing an agreement or memorandum of understanding," Shara said, adding that the inquiry had failed to produce compelling evidence against Syria.

The Security Council extended the inquiry's mandate for six more months earlier in December and authorised the investigators to help Lebanon investigate a string of political killings.

The 15-nation body also asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to help Beirut establish a war crimes court with an "international character" to try suspects in the Hariri case.

But Mehlis, who was appointed in May to lead the probe, has chosen not to renew his contract, citing personal reasons.

His official role with the U.N. ends this month, when he is widely expected to be replaced by Brammertz, deputy prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Court.

In two preliminary reports already presented to the Security Council, Mehlis implicated top Syrian officials in Hariri's assassination in Beirut. Syria has denied any involvement in the killing and dismissed the reports as politically-motivated.

Mehlis, who will stay on until his successor takes over, met with top Lebanese judicial officials in Beirut on Wednesday to discuss the inquiry's progress, judicial sources said. (Reuters)