The foreign ministers of the five UN Security Council members met on the weekend in New York ahead of a vote Monday on a resolution aimed at securing Syria's cooperation with the probe into the murder of Lebanon's ex-premier, the French foreign ministry said.

"The meeting was aimed at reviewing topics currently under discussion at the United Nations Security Council, including the appropriate follow-up to the report by Judge (Detlev) Mehlis," a ministry spokesman said, adding that the gathering took place Sunday.

The report by UN chief investigator Mehlis implicated senior Syrian security officials in former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri's murder in February.

But US Ambassador John Bolton predicted the resolution would be approved at a Security Council meeting Monday to be attended by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other foreign ministers.

Rice hosted a dinner Sunday evening at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York for the foreign ministers of the four other permanent members of the Security Council Russia's Sergey Lavrov, China's Li Zhaoxing, Britain's Jack Straw and France's Philippe Douste-Blazy. The meeting with the four other veto-wielding Security Council powers was the last opportunity to change the text ahead of Monday morning's vote.

The draft resolution strongly backs a report by the UN investigating commission led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, which implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in the Feb. 14 bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others. The report also accused Syria of not cooperating fully with the probe.