BBC profile: Abdul Halim Khaddam indicate disagreement inside Syrian leadership

The BBC in a profile story of Syria's former vice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam, who has just accused the Syrian regime of being corrupt, and of threats by Syria's President Bashar al-Assad against Lebanese former prime minister Rafiq Hariri months before his assassination, said Khaddam is centre-stage "after months of silent exile in France."

The BBC said "Until his resignation in June 2004, Khaddam had exercised considerable influence in Syrian politics for three decades, and had been regarded as a leading hardliner. Born in 1932, he was one of the longest-serving veterans in Damascus' Baathist regime. He was an official in the party by the 1960s, before being appointed foreign minister and deputy prime minister in the 1970s."

The BBC said "In 1984, Khaddam was promoted to the vice-president, and worked to assert Syria's dominance over Lebanon. He was seen as the architect of Syria's controversial policy of military presence and political dominance over Beirut. 'Lebanon will either be united or will be returned to Syria,' he said in 1976."

The BBC said "He served for many years under the late President Hafez al-Assad, transferring allegiance to his son Bashar when he took office in 2000 after his father's death. While in power, Khaddam remained fiercely opposed to any loosening of the Baath Party's grip on power."

The BBC reported that in a newspaper interview in 2004, he said that those who suggested changing the regime either did not understand that this would jeopardize the "stability of the state" or "serve the plans of foreign elements and of Israel."

In his interview with al-Arabiya, Khaddam said his decision to resign was due to the corruption in Syria and seeing that reform was not taking place.

The BBC quoted him saying "I became convinced that the process of rehabilitation and reform, be it political, economic or administrative, will not kick off." "So I decided to resign. I did some soul-searching and faced two options: to side either with the homeland or with the regime. I chose to side with the homeland because it is the constant fact, whereas the regime is a transient state in the history of the country, just like other regimes elsewhere."

A New York Times report said: "This tells us there is major friction inside the Syrian leadership and that he was ready to confront his enemies inside the Syrian regime," said Nawaf Kabbara, professor of political science professor at Balamand University in Beirut. "But it may also mean that he has international powers protecting him." Others cast Khaddam's public criticisms as a sign of weakness, a signal that he had exhausted all other avenues of response to President Assad.

The New York Times' report added: "Khaddam must recognize he is burning bridges in Syria by doing this," said Flynt L. Leverett, senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in the Brookings Institution. "If the investigation had turned out differently, Khaddam would not need to be doing this. But he's running out of options, and this was clearly one of the few he had left." A report by the same paper said Khaddam was the only Syrian official to be in the Hariri funeral.

The BBC noted that some observers see Khaddam's remarks from Paris as the start of a battle for the Syrian leadership adding that in the Syrian parliamentary televised debate on Khaddam's statements, one MP said "If you dream of returning to Syria on a US tank, no citizen will accept that."