German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who was flying to Beirut on Wednesday, said he looks forward to the promised cooperation of Lebanon’s government and to the support and help of the Lebanese people.

“We will do our very best to find out who planned, facilitated and carried out this terrible crime against totally innocent people,” he told a news conference on Tuesday.

The UN Security Council voted unanimously on April 7 to authorize an international investigation into Hariri’s Feb. 14 killing in a bombing in Beirut which killed 20 others as well. His assassination caused an uproar in Lebanon, sparking massive anti-Syrian street protests and leading to the withdrawal of all Syrian troops, and all intelligence operatives from known locations.

The council vote followed a report in March by a UN fact-finding team which concluded that a Lebanese probe into the killing did not meet international standards. The team, led by deputy Irish police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, called for an entirely new investigation by an outside team.

Mehlis was asked whether he would be able to get to the bottom of the assassination, with the evidence now three months old.

“I’m optimistic - cautiously optimistic that we can,” he said.

Mehlis, the senior public prosecutor in the Berlin attorney general’s office, said he plans to review earlier evidence and information to determine how best to focus his commission’s work and will then bring in between 25 and 40 investigators “who will undertake an intensive investigation of the crime.”

He said his investigation will include a larger team than Fitzgerald’s and will have more time. The Security Council urged the commission to complete its work in three months but gave Secretary-General Kofi Annan authority to extend its mandate for an additional three months if necessary.

Unlike Fitzgerald, who conducted an evaluation in a very limited time frame, Mehlis said his probe “will be a classic, criminal, prosecutorial investigation.”

“The aim of the investigation is to hand over the results to the Lebanese, so we will very much follow the Lebanese code of criminal procedure,” he said.

Mehlis said it was too early to say whether he would go to Syria to talk to government officials, explaining he first has to deterime the “bare facts.” Asked whether there would be sanctions if a party refused to cooperate, he said, “as far as I can see it, no one will refuse to cooperate.”

“Cooperation is the most important part, be it from the Lebanese, be it from whoever has information that can help us,” Mehlis stressed.

A UN military team on Monday verified the pullout of all Syrian troops from Lebanon but said it couldn’t be certain all intelligence operatives had left the country, stressing that “intelligence activities are by nature often clandestine.”

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said this issue remains “an open question” and President George W. Bush’s administration will be looking “at all available evidence as to whether there are continuing intelligence presence and continuing attempts to exercise influence,” especially in Lebanon’s upcoming elections.

Algeria’s UN Ambassador Abdallah Baali said his conclusion is that Syrian intelligence operatives have left Lebanon, noting that in “this country, in my country, in every country in the world, you will have clandestine people.”