Still, Mehlis, who was tasked with investigating the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al  Hariri, has made considerable headway, despite lack of cooperation from pro-Syrian Lebanese and Syrian officials who would have much rather seen the whole affair swept under the proverbial rug.

But despite the obstacles, Mehlis persisted. His investigation produced amazing results leading to the arrests of half-a-dozen top Lebanese official, including the heads of internal and general security. This sort of investigation was unheard of in an Arab country, where the top brass traditionally felt immune from prosecution.

Upon wrapping-up the Beirut phase of his inquiry, as expected, Mehlis turned his focus on Damascus next, where several fingers of his investigation pointed. And this is where the German investigator ran into hard opposition.

Damascus has consistently denied having any involvement in the killing of the former Lebanese politician, and has also refused to allow the UN prosecutor access to Syrian officers who were present in Lebanon at the time of the murder.

Informed sources confirmed to me that at least two names of high-ranking Syrian officials may figure on Mehlis’ list of potential suspects in the Hariri case. At this point, they haven’t been marked as suspects, but nonetheless Mehlis would like to question them. Those names, the source believes, are that of Maher Assad, brother of the president, Bashar Assad and the director of Syrian military intelligence Asaf Shouaqat, the president’s brother-in-law.

If that turned out to be the case, it would present the Syrian president with the greatest challenge of his political career yet.

If indeed Maher and Shouqat turn out to be suspects, Bashar will have a hard time going along with the UN investigation and delivering his brother and brother-in-law to an international tribunal in The Hague. The alternative left to Bashar would be to shun the findings of the international community and face the consequences, which may quite possibly come in the form of economic and political sanctions.

According to a well-informed Syrian source, the mood in Damascus is one of worried expectations as many expect sanctions to be applied. No one truly expects Bashar to hand his close relatives to a foreign tribunal. The very structure of the Syrian political system makes it difficult for the president to turn over his own to an outside jurisdiction because loyalty among the ranks would begin to disintegrate.

"If Bashar were to hand over a member of his immediate family it would start unravelling the entire Syrian power structure," said someone well informed with the workings of the regime in Damascus, and who for obvious reasons requested anonymity.

As was the case with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the regime in Damascus is built along strong family and clan lines, based on extreme loyalty and centred around its leader, rather than on any pure political ideology. Although the Syrian Baath Party, like its Iraqi counterpart, stresses Arab unity, nationalism and Arab socialism, the bottom line is that much of the infrastructure is build with the aim of keeping the regime in power as long as possible.

One must think of the Syrian system as an inverted pyramid, much as the system in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was.

The leader, in this case Bashar, acts as the keystone to the structure that is the Syrian Baath Party and in fact the entire Syrian ruling hierarchy. Like an inverted pyramid, Bashar lies at the bottom and centre of the structure. The next most important members of the regime can be found juxtaposed immediately above the leader, with subordinates above them, and the next line above those, and so on.

The result is that it builds a strong, tight-knit web of loyal subordinates as they rely on each other for their survival. The weakness in any such structure is that if you remove the keystone, or any of the primary stones from the structure, the entire structure wobbles and risks collapse. This is what happened in Iraq. This is what may happen in Syria, if Bashar turns on those closest to him.

Which is why sources close to President Assad believe the Syrian president would rather face the UN sanctions than hand over to the UN investigators any member of his family.

With that in mind, Bashar, who was planning to travel to New York to attend the UN General Assembly meeting, has cancelled his trip, preferring to remain close to home in order to face whatever fallout may result from the UN investigation. And some fallout is indeed expected.

Claude Salhani is International Editor and political analyst with United Press International in Washington.