Lebanon urges UN to explore 'alternative' tribunal funding

Lebanon's caretaker prime minister on Friday urged the United Nations to urgently consider "alternative means" to fund a UN-backed court for the country that may close over a cash crisis.

"Taking into account the ongoing acute crises that Lebanon suffers from... (we) would be grateful to Your Excellency for urgently exploring different and alternative means of financing" the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Hassan Diab wrote in a letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres.

The STL, which was set up to try suspects in the 2005 killing of former Lebanese premier Rafic Hariri, said this week it risks closure by the end of July without a cash injection.

The court based in the Netherlands on Thursday cancelled the opening of a new trial of one of Hariri's killers that had been set for June 16 "due to lack of funds".

The STL has cost between $600 million and $1 billion since it opened.

It draws 51 percent of its budget from donor countries and the rest from Lebanon, which is grappling with its deepest economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The World Bank said this week that Lebanon's financial downturn is likely to rank among the world's worst since the mid-19th century.

In his appeal, Diab called on UN member states to keep the court alive.

"The most painful consequences of the cessation of the STL's work lie in the reflection of a fragmented and incomplete justice," he said.

Sunni billionaire Hariri, who had stepped down as Lebanon's prime minister in October 2004, was killed in a February 2005 suicide blast targeting his armoured convoy.

The attack killed 22 people and injured 226.

Born from a United Nations Security Council resolution and inaugurated in 2009, the STL last year sentenced Hezbollah suspect Salim Ayyash in absentia to life imprisonment over the huge 2005 truck bombing.