STEVE INSKEEP, host: The United Nations Security Council is deciding whether to establish an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister. The government has been unable to break a domestic political deadlock over establishing that court, so now the UN is poised to get into the tricky world of Lebanese politics, as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.

MICHELE KELEMEN: In a letter to the U.N. secretary general this week, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he's reached a dead end. The speaker of parliament, he explained, refused to convene a session to formally set up the tribunal...

KELEMEN: What precisely the Security Council resolution will say is still being debated among the experts, he says. The U.S. wants to give U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon some real flexibility in case Lebanese parties can't agree on the next steps - where to hold the tribunal or how to fund it. Ban Ki-Moon has said the Security Council should follow up on the letter from Lebanon's prime minister...

Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation says there are political risks to U.N. action.

Dr. FLYNT LEVERETT (Senior Fellow, New America Foundation): If you push for this under U.N. auspices without a prior political agreement in Lebanon, you're really risking further polarization of an already quite strained political environment.

KELEMEN: Leverett, a former White House aide, says the Bush administration has never been realistic enough in its understanding of Lebanese politics. He also thinks the U.S. has romanticized the 2005 uprising that forced Syrian troops out.

Dr. LEVERETT: The administration believes that getting Syrian troops out of Lebanon in the wake of Prime Minister Hariri's assassination two years ago is one of its major successes in the region. And it's determined to see it through...

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