Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, meets Iranian Assistant Foreign Minister Mohammed Raaza Baqary in Damascus Jan. 5, 2006. Baqary delivered a message to the Syrian President from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.(AP Photo / Sana)
Posted on 01/05/2006 6:49:00 PM PST by NormsRevenge
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A former Syrian vice president who has openly broken with President Bashar Assad intensified his criticism Thursday, saying the Damascus regime had outlived its time and was unlikely to survive much longer.
Abdul-Halim Khaddam, who left his post in the Syrian government in June, was asked in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press interview from Paris whether he supported regime change.
Yes," he replied adding that he had no personal interest in leading the drive to oust Assad.
"This is the least of my concerns. What concerns me is for the Syrian people to recover their freedom and their ability to decide their own fate," he said.
Khaddam, who was deeply involved in the Syrian presence in Lebanon, said Assad's "mistakes" on the domestic and international front had weakened the Syrian regime beyond repair to the point where "it can no longer reform itself. It has become like a model 1916 car."
"I am convinced that the regime committed big mistakes against Syria and Lebanon ... and consequently it must shoulder its responsibility in front of the Syrian people," Khaddam said. "I think the regime has no chance of surviving in the long term."
Khaddam, a one-time stalwart of the ruling Baath Party, formally declared his break with the Assad regime in an interview with Al-Arabiya satellite TV station on Dec. 30, in which he lashed out at the Syrian leadership and criticized it for corruption and failure to reform.
He also said that former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri was threatened by Syria months before he was assassinated. That claim made him the first former top member of the Syrian government to confirm allegations in a U.N. commission report that Assad threatened Hariri in an August 2004 meeting. The two leaders were at odds about Syria's desire to extend the mandate of Lebanon's pro-Syrian president. Hariri was known to oppose the extension.
The U.N. probe into Hariri's killing has already implicated Syria, but Damascus has denied the allegations. Hariri, a Lebanese nationalist who sought to assist his country wiggle free from Syrian control, was assassinated in a truck bombing Feb. 14 in Beirut. The blast killed 20 other people.
Khaddam's damaging remarks on Al-Arabiya caused an uproar in Syria, where he was declared a traitor who should stand trial, stripped of his membership in the ruling Baath Party and his assets impounded.
On Thursday, he repeated his criticism of Assad and said he was personally responsible through his decisions and behavior for isolating Syria.
"The regime has weakened itself as a result of wrong vision and mistakes made on the domestic and international fronts," Khaddam told AP.
"President Bashar Assad took grave decisions, unilaterally and against our advice," he added, citing the decision to extend President Emile Lahoud's term in office.
Syria's push for the three-year extension of the staunchly pro-Syrian Lahoud's presidency is September 2004 — which required a constitutional amendment — was considered responsible for the crisis in Lebanese-Syrian relations that led to Hariri's Feb. 14 assassination and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in April after nearly three decades.
Khaddam said such mistakes, in addition to the Syrian regime's failure to effect political and economic reforms, caused him to give up on the regime and decide to speak out.
He denied that he was encouraged to publicly break with the Syrian regime by Saudi Arabia or any other country and said such talk was baseless.
There hadd been speculation that his TV appearance on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya was intended as a message from Saudi leaders to the Syrians.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, meets Iranian Assistant Foreign Minister Mohammed Raaza Baqary in Damascus Jan. 5, 2006. Baqary delivered a message to the Syrian President from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.(AP Photo / Sana)
Syria has frozen the assets of former vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam, seen here in 2001, who has linked Damascus to Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri's murder, ahead of an inquiry into alleged corruption.(AFP/File/Nicholas Kamm)
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visits the tomb of late Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri in Beirut. Straw ratcheted up the pressure on Syria, telling it to cooperate with the UN probe into the assassination of Hariri.(AFP/Anwar Amro)
He really does look like one of those people who, when he was a baby, never got turned over from sleeping flat on his back...
It's been a while since one of the brutal terrorist supporting dictatorships fell from internal pressure without us having to do anything... I think we are about due.
Whatever happened on that Debka report the other day that said that the head of Syria's intellegence service had defected to Great Britain????
Did it or will it turn out to be another typical Debka error, or one of their less common actual 'scoops'???
It must suck to go through life without a jaw.
Episode II of the Curveball Saga.
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