Heading off a direct confrontation with the United Nations Security Council, Syria has agreed to allow five officials to leave Damascus to be questioned in Vienna by the prosecutor investigating the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The announcement of a deal between Syrian officials and the prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis, was first made in Damascus on Friday and later confirmed in a short statement issued by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, in New York. Full Story