4/14/2007 8:00:00 AM GMT

The UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he would send Nicholas Michel, the undersecretary-general for legal affairs, to Beirut next week in an attempt to "clarify all concerns or apprehensions one may have on these issues (the Hariri tribunal)."

Last week, Ban said that Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s parliament speaker who opposes plans for a special court, demanded the UN to provide legal assistance on the formation of a Hariri tribunal – a major point of difference between pro- and anti-Syrian members of the Lebanese parliament.

The UN Security Council had signed an accord that would create an international tribunal but Lebanon had not ratified it.

The Western-backed, anti-Syrian cabinet of Lebanese Prime Ministr Fuoad Saniora has approved the tribunal and the prime minister has been pressing parliament to approve it.

Last week, Saniora sent a memorandum to Ban calling on the UN Security Council to independently establish an international tribunal after Berri refused to call the parliament into session to ratify the special court.

If Lebanon fails to ratify the proposal for forming a special court, the UN may consider independently authorizing a tribunal as it did in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, correspondents say.

The Lebanese government had originally requested a tribunal to try suspects in Hariri’s murder as well a UN probe into the Feb. 14, 2005 assassination, which sparked widespread protests in Lebanon and triggered extensive international pressure on Syria, forcing it to withdraw all its forces from its neighbor.

Although Ban is sending his top legal advisor to Lebanon, he said he would like Lebanese politicians to work out their differences on their own.

"The purpose of his (Michel's) visit to Lebanon is to offer his legal assistance to the Lebanese government and political leaders, to help their constitutional procedures," Ban told reporters.

"I sincerely hope that his visit will help the political leaders of Lebanon ... so that the special tribunal can be established as soon as possible."

Ban also urged Lebanese politicians to "engage in all-inclusive political dialogue to promote national reconciliation."

Michel, a Swiss, said he would stay in Beirut as long as necessary but wouldn’t be directly involved in political splits that have intensified over the past year.

"I'm going to go there, offer my good offices on behalf of the secretary-general, and let the parties understand that they had expressed the wish to establish a tribunal and we are there to try to achieve that seriously with them," Michel said.

"We simply want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to share his or her proposals, and make sure that at the end we have a broad support in the country for the establishment of the tribunal," he added.

An uncompleted UN probe into the Hariri murder has implicated Syrian officials, but Damascus has denied any involvement.

Syria also denies claims by some members of Lebanon’s anti-Syrian parliamentary majority that it wants to block the formation of the tribunal.

(Hezb – ollah), whose members in parliament walked out of the cabinet recently over the government’s failure to form a unity coalition, warns that a UN-imposed tribunal will be "against Lebanon and not to try the killers of Premier Hariri."