to meet with senior international magistrates.

The judges who traveled on Monday, will spend two days at the International Court of Justice and then head for the U.N. headquarters in New York City.

According to An Nahar newspaper , the negotiations will focus on the agreement between the Lebanese government and the United Nations over the formation of the court.

The main issues to be discussed are:
. Location of the tribunal court, which should be outside of Lebanon and Syria
. Eliminating the death penalty, in order to meet UN regulations
. Structure of the tribunal, which is expected to be made up of a primary court and a court of appeals.

The judges have been meeting with legal experts at the United Nations since January to determine the nature and scope of the court to try the culprits in the Feb. 14, 2005 bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others.

In March, the U.N. Security Council passed resolution 1664 that called on Secretary-General Kofi Annan to negotiate an agreement with the Lebanese government on creating the tribunal.

The resolution followed a report by the U.N. chief in which he said that a hybrid court that includes foreign and Lebanese judges located outside Lebanon would be most appropriate to try the case.

Issues such as the funding of the court, the applicable law, the location, jurisdiction and other details remained to be determined before concluding the agreement.

One matter of concern to the international community is the death sentence that is sanctioned under Lebanese law. Officials, including Justice Minister Charles Rizk, have said that Lebanon was willing to suspend the death penalty in this case.

Suspects in the murder

So far several Lebanese and Syrian officials have been named as suspects in the murder. Many of the Lebanese suspects are already in jail pending trial. Detlev Mehlis, previous UN chief investigator named several Syrian officials as primary suspects, but Serge Brammertz who replaced him, refrained from naming any suspects at this stage and decided instead to carry on with his investigation on a very low key bases to avoid antagonizing the Syrian Regime which is the primary suspect in the murder.

So far Syria has been cooperating with Brammertz... Whether Syria will continue to cooperate once the suspects are named and sent to Jail, remains to be seen.

Sources: Ya Libnan, Naharnet