Former Syrian vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam has said that the country's regime is incapable of reform and must be overthrown, in remarks published on Friday.
"This regime cannot be reformed. The only alternative is to overthrow it," Khaddam told the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, speaking from Paris where he and his family now live.
He said that he was "working to bring about the suitable conditions for Syrians to pour into the streets and act to overthrow the Syrian regime so that things go well".
Khaddam caused an uproar a week ago when he said that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad had personally threatened former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri a few months before he was assassinated in February.
The popular five-time prime minister was killed in a Beirut bomb blast for which a UN probe has implicated Syrian intelligence. Damascus has roundly denied any involvement in that murder, or those of three other prominent anti-Syrian figures since then.
Long the architect of Syria's military and political domination of Lebanon, Khaddam's accusations have dealt a fresh blow to the increasingly pressured Syrian regime.
Amid the international outcry following Hariri's death, and under pressure from a UN Security Council resolution, Syria withdrew its troops from neighboring Lebanon last April after 29 years.
On Thursday Khaddam said that Assad should be thrown in jail.
"He should go. To the house ... to prison," Khaddam said on France 3 television when asked about Assad's future.
"The most important thing is to save Syria from this regime," he said, adding that "those who were behind the assassination in Lebanon continue to kill because their goal is to create chaos in the country".
He said that he believed that his life was "in danger" even in France but insisted that he was not scared.
In remarks broadcast on CNN Khaddam said that Assad had taken decisions that had "brought considerable damage to Syria".
These, he said, led to the murder of Hariri, the "humiliating pullout" of Syrian forces, a split in relations with Lebanon and international isolation.
"The one who caused all of this is Bashar Al Assad. So he is the culprit."
Khaddam, who resigned in June, spoke after Syria froze his assets and those of his family. That decision was announced three days after an announcement in the official press that Damascus intended to try him for high treason and investigate him for corruption. His three sons and daughter own several companies.
Overthrow Syrian regime, says former VP
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