Posted on 01/01/2006 5:51:43 PM PST by blam
Exile enrages Syria by linking Assad to Hariri assassination
By Harry de Quetteville
(Filed: 02/01/2006)
Syria's ruling Ba'ath party yesterday expelled one of the country's most senior politicians after he implicated President Bashar al-Assad in an assassination plot last year.
The party denounced Abdel-Halim Khaddam, 73, a former vice-president and a stalwart of the Ba'ath regime, as a traitor to the "party, the homeland and the Arab nation" for his remarks. Earlier the Syrian parliament had called for him to be put on trial for high treason.
Mr Khaddam, who resigned six months ago, is already in exile in Paris.
It was there that he made a scathing attack on the Assad regime last week. He said that Mr Assad had threatened the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri only months before the ex-premier was murdered in a bomb explosion in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
''I will destroy anyone who tries to hinder our decisions," he quoted the president as telling him, after a meeting with Mr Hariri.
Interim reports of a United Nations investigation into Mr Hariri's killing have pointed the finger at Syria and its vast security apparatus in Lebanon. The UN reports had put intense pressure on the Assad regime, but the investigation has been losing momentum in recent weeks and the worst appeared over for the Syrian president.
Mr Khaddam also used the interview to re-brand himself from old-guard Ba'athist to new-style reformer, saying he had resigned because the pace of change in Syria was too slow for him and that he wanted to serve his "motherland" not a "regime".
In Lebanon his remarks have been greeted as confirmation that Mr Assad ordered Mr Hariri's murder.
But in Syria they have seen as the comments of an opportunist seeking to set himself up as a potentially Western-backed rival to Mr Assad.
Beware of honor killing moose. Make a nice road sign.
I wouldn't want to be the gentleman who is assigned to start this mans auto in the mornings..
Too bad we vant expell Kennedy, Kerry, Reid , and half a dozen more traitors from this country.
Typical journalistic acceptance of false emotion. Does anyone really believe Syria, or even its leadership, is "enraged"? They are a bunch of blood thirsty cutthroats and they are play-acting to frighten others and to fool the gullible world press.
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