Syrian dissident raises questions

PARIS, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- After remaining silent for months, former Syrian vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam is suddenly talking -- using the international media to call for the toppling of his country's government and suggesting Damascus had a hand in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Khaddam was reportedly interviewed Friday at his new home in Paris by German judge Detlev Mehlis, as part of an ongoing United Nations investigation into Hariri's death. And another exiled Syrian dissident -- the London-based leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni -- reportedly told the Financial Times that he would work with Khaddam to change the Syrian regime.

The flurry of interviews Khaddam has given to the Western and Middle Eastern press in recent days raises at least two key questions: Why has he decided to speak out now? And are his declarations credible?

After all, 73-year-old Khaddam is not just any exiled dissident. The former vice-president spent decades in the inner circles of Syrian power, first under former president Hafez al Assad and later under his son and current leader, Bashar.

"You have to take what he says with pincers," said Judith Cahen, a Syrian specialist at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. "His allegations are only coming out now -- when he's secure, at a time when the entire international community is judging Damascus."

"Khaddam can only benefit," Cahen added. "There's no danger for him -- either politically or for his life."

In fact Khaddam, who moved to Paris in September, is benefiting from French police protection at the Right Bank home where he now lives. Apart from this, the French government maintains he is a private citizen. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Friday there is "absolutely no political contact" with the former vice-president.

Offering shelter to Syrian dissidents is not entirely a new experience for France. Paris was long the home of Rifaat al Assad. The brother and onetime close ally of Hafez al Assad later turned into a key opponent of both the elder and younger Syrian leaders.

As with Rifaat, Damascus is far from pleased with the latest dissident-in-exile. According to Arabic media, Syria's parliament voted in late December to put Khaddam on trial in absentia for treason. The ruling Baath party separately voted to oust Khaddam as a member.

Both moves appear directly linked to a series of explosive accusations Khaddam has recently made in the media. Among them: Suggestions that Hariri's death -- and several other recent assassinations in Lebanon -- could not have taken place without Bashar al-Assad's approval.

"What killed Hariri killed the others," Khaddam told France Info radio in remarks broadcast Monday. "This decision can only be taken by the President [of Syria]."

During a lengthy interview with Newsweek, Khaddam described threats against Hariri issued not only by Assad but also by Syrian general Rustom Ghazaleh, who served as proconsul in Lebanon until Syria withdrew its troops from the country last April.

He told Newsweek he had also heard similar statements from several Lebanese officials with close ties to Syria's government. And he described Assad recounting a conversation with Hariri, in which the Syrian leader warned he would "crush" anyone working against his will.

While Khaddam was a confidante of Bashar's father, his ties with the younger Assad have not been particularly close, Cahen of the French Institute says. That raises questions about why he would have been privy to sensitive conversations about assassinating Hariri.

Indeed, since taking power in 2000, Assad has been routing out Syria's old guard in a larger drive to route out corruption and to instill a cadre of younger, ostensibly more open-minded politicians. It's unclear whether the former vice president was among those targeted for removal, Cahen said.

Whether Khaddam will emerge as a leader of Syria's dissident diaspora is another unknown.

In a series of interviews, he has called for a peaceful change of power from within, denouncing Syria's president as unfit to lead. "Bashar al Assad is impulsive, nervous and fearful," Khaddam told France's Le Monde newspaper, in an interview published this weekend as he described how the Syrian President would imprison and then release dissidents.

In another interview, published Monday in Le Nouvel Observateur, Khaddam described his country as ravaged by poverty, unemployment and lack of civil liberties, and predicted the Syrian government "will fall."

But as a longtime member of Syria's power structure Khaddam, too, faces an image problem.

In an interview in the Financial Times last week Bayanouni, the Muslim Brotherhood leader, gave Khaddam careful and only partial support -- saying only he was willing to work with former regime officials committed to democratic change.

And Cahen, for one, is skeptical that political change will arrive in Syria without backing from the country's powerful military. "There is a Syrian opposition, but it's not united at the moment," she said. "And unless there is a real democratic opening with real elections, you can't do anything without the army in Syria."

For the moment, at least, "the army doesn't support the opposition," she said.