"Rafiq Hariri was a legend," said Charles Rizk, Lebanon's minister of justice. "And legends never die," Rizk said of the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated just over three years ago.

"Despite his assassination, Rafiq Hariri is today more alive than he has ever been," continued the Lebanese justice minister, addressing a packed audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

Rizk said the slain Lebanese leader had not only excelled at rebuilding the destroyed city center of Beirut, but had also had rebuilt the state.

At least he was on his way to doing so when he was brutally murdered on St. Valentine's Day in 2005, when a bomb ripped through his convoy killing him and nearly a dozen others.

An international investigation established by the United Nations led the inquiry into his murder. A number of sources have accused the Syrians of having played a role in the killing; accusations rejected by the leadership in Damascus, who equally refute the notion of an international tribunal hearing the proceedings.

Rizk, in his capacity as minister of justice, finds himself facing the arduous – not to say extremely dangerous – task of pushing through the formalities that some Lebanese hope will eventually lead to the trial of those who committed the crime. He confronts not only the "traditional opposition," but none other than the president of Syria, Bashar Assad. Syria has been accused by the United States and the Lebanese government of having had a hand in the killing of the popular prime minister.

Syria has been opposed to the idea of the international tribunal, which Rizk said was scheduled to begin hearings in The Hague, "in the very near future." With that in mind, Assad has been exerting pressure on the Lebanese in any which way he can, including delaying the election of the country's president, a position that has been vacant since November 2007 when Emile Lahoud's term expired.

The political arm-wrestling between Syria and its allies (including Iran), and the pro-government March 14 Movement backed by Saudi Arabia, became even more intense Thursday when Riyadh announced that it was pulling its ambassador from Damascus. Coming up only weeks shy of a scheduled Arab summit due to be held in the Syrian capital, the latest development causes a serious setback in the attempted negotiations at finding a way out of the Lebanese political impasse.

Some observers qualify this political struggle between the March 14 Movement, backed by the United States, the European Union and Saudi Arabia among others, and the opposition made up primarily of Hezbollah and their strange bedfellow ally, Gen. Michele Aoun, and backed by Syria and Iran, as a political bashing of heads between Washington and the Damascus-Tehran axis.

Rizk said that in order to keep the memory of Hariri alive, it was important for the tribunal to move forward so as to "clean the country of the consequences of this crime … and to complete what Hariri had started."

Still, despite the enormous difficulties along the way, including the assassination of nearly 20 prominent politicians, journalists and parliamentarians – all of whom happened to oppose Syria's attempts at imposing its political will on Lebanon – Rizk said that the setting for the tribunal was already.

"We expect very, very, very soon for the tribunal to be on track and the machine will be launched." He added that "far from being a divisive element in the Lebanese and regional life, the tribunal should be considered as a factor of unity, of reconciliation, to wash our consciences and our country from this horrendous crime, which was committed three years and two weeks ago."

Jeffrey Feltman, former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, summed it up: "The tribunal is not solely to find out the truth behind the murder of Rafiq Hariri; it's also about ending an era of impunity for murder in Lebanon."