PARIS, Feb 15 (AFP) - The assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri was a deliberate blow to France, whose president Jacques Chirac was a personal friend and has sponsored UN moves to end the Syrian occupation, Paris-based commentators said Tuesday.

While the French government refused to point a finger of blame - adhering publicly to Chirac's call for an international investigation into the murder - analysts and Middle East specialists were less circumspect about who they thought was behind it.

"I have not the shadow of a doubt that Syria is responsible," said Antoine Basbous, president of the Observatory of Arab Countries.

"It was a message to the Lebanese opposition - but also to France: this is our colony, we are masters here and we intend to stay. So keep out," he told AFP.

Hariri regularly visited France and kept a multi-million euro mansion in central Paris. He was one of the first foreign leaders to be invited to the Elysee palace after Chirac's 1995 election, and the following year was presented by the president with the grand cross of the Legion of Honour.

"I am convinced this attack - the most significant since the end of Lebanon's war - was a message directed at Chirac, who was a personal friend of Rafiq Hariri," said Antoine Sfeir, director of the Cahiers de l'Orient newsletter.

"The evidence suggests that the murder is a response to UN security council resolution 1559 voted in September at the initiative of France and the US. It was Jacques Chirac who was the real architect of the resolution," he said.

 Resolution 1559 calls for the withdrawal of Syria's estimated 15,000 troops from Lebanon and the re-establishment of full Lebanese sovereignty.

A month after it was passed, Syria strong-armed a change to Lebanon's constitution to extend the mandate of pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud - the move which prompted Hariri's resignation as prime minister.

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