Syrian regime doomed

BEIRUT - Alternative Staff

January/February 2006

The Syrian Baathist regime is bound to fall down in the coming six months, political sources in Beirut told Alternative.

This information was later confirmed by former Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam who – over a string of bullet biting interviews – accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of ordering the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri.

“Assad will have to step down before the end of this year,” Khaddam told one of his interviewers.  He also said that a crime as organized as the assassination of Hariri could hardly be executed by one person. “A whole apparatus should have been behind this complicated operation.”

Khaddam’s interviews were coupled with the publication of pictures of Syrian intelligence agent Houssam Houssam showing him marching in the funeral procession of slain communist leader George Hawi.

Houssam, an agent who was ordered to misguide the International Investigation Committee looking into the killing of Hariri by giving wrong information, held a press conference in Syria claiming that his testimony was given under threats. After the appearance of his pictures in Hawi’s funeral, neither Houssam nor the Syrian regime had comments on the issue. The Syrian regime, however, presented yet another so-called “witness” under pressure called Jarjoura. The credibility of the second witness barely won press coverage.

Members of the family of May Chidiac, a TV anchor who survived an assassination attempt, told Alternative on the condition of anonymity that Houssam had shown up at the hospital where Chidiac was being treated in Beirut. “At the time we didn’t recognize him but after his press conference, we immediately could identify him,” the family member said.

With all fingers pointing at the involvement of the Syrian regime and its intelligence agents in the killing of Hariri, Samir Kassir, Hawi and the attempts at the lives of politician Marwan Hamadeh and TV anchor May Chidiac, the Syrian regime still stands its ground pleading non-guilty.

The Syrian regime has not only pleaded innocence. It moved from a defensive position to an offensive one by inviting Arab countries to broker a deal between it and Lebanon. Throughout the month of January, Syrian and Lebanese pro-Syrian envoys shuttled between Riad, Cairo, Damascus, Beirut and Paris in an attempt to sponsor a deal between the Baathist regime and the Lebanese government.

The deal would have included six points that according to Lebanese politicians would bring the Syrian occupation back and therefore has been rejected.