DAMASCUS, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Syria on Thursday set condition for its cooperation with an international tribunal on the assassination of Lebanese ex-Premier Rafik Hariri as President Bashar al-Assad told a parliament session that Syria would offer help to the court if it did not violate its national sovereignty.

    In a televised address to the newly elected People's Assembly (parliament), Assad said the international tribunal's request should not encroach upon Syria's sovereignty, saying that "any cooperation requested from Syria that compromises national sovereignty is totally rejected."

    "We consider that the international tribunal concerns only Lebanon and the United Nations and that we are not directly concerned," Assad said.

    Assad stressed the need to differentiate between cooperation and abandoning sovereignty, saying "the abandonment of sovereignty means that Syrian law no longer protects Syrian citizens."

    The president added that Syria supported what the Lebanese agreed upon and Lebanon's peace and stability was Syria's.

    The Security Council passed a resolution establishing the tribunal last November, but rival parties in Lebanon have since been in disagreement over the formation of the tribunal, which is the worst political split in the country since its 1975-1990 civil war.

    The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, which Syria supports and the U.S. describes as a terror group, and its Shiite political allies, as well as some pro-Syrian Maronite Christians, withdrew from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's cabinet soon after the resolution on the tribunal was passed.

    The Lebanese cabinet later voted in favor of the tribunal, but pro-Syrian politicians later prevented a parliamentary vote to ratify the decision.

    During a trip here last month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon implied that the United Nations might take a decision on its own if pro- and anti-Syrian factions in Beirut cannot reach an agreement on the tribunal.

    "If they are not able to agree on that, this is something the United Nations, particularly the Security Council, will have to consider," Ban said, adding "I'm not in a position to say something other than that."

    U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed his view earlier this week in a front-page editorial in Lebanon's leading Arabic-language newspaper An-Nahar, warning that the United Nations would act on its own if the Lebanese parliament failed to endorse setting up such a court.

    It was reported that U.S. and French diplomats were preparing a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter that would allow the council to establish the international tribunal even as the pro-Syrian opposition maintains its resistance.

    Washington "will use every means at its disposal to further the pursuit of justice and to put an end to the current campaign of assassinations," Rice wrote in the editorial.

    Hariri was killed in a massive truck bomb in Beirut in February2005, for which senior Syrian officials has been implicated by a UN investigation commission.

    Damascus, however, denied any role in the killing, but was forced to withdraw its troops from its smaller neighbor in 2005 following the murder, ending a 29-year military presence there.

    Meanwhile, Syria insists on trying any Syrians at home if they were involved and it has also objected the move to set up the tribunal before the UN commission ended its inquiry into the killing.