Syrian ex-vice president Khaddam dies in France

PARIS - Abdul-Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president who became a prominent opponent of President Bashar al-Assad after fleeing to Paris in 2005, died on Tuesday at the age of 88 in France. Khaddam succumbed at 5 a.m. to a heart attack, Salah Ayach, a Syrian exile who was close to him, said.

Khaddam had served for 30 years in the upper echelons of the state under the late President Hafez al-Assad and his son, Bashar, who became president in 2000.

In 2005, Khaddam defected from the Syrian regime live on the Al Arabiya TV channel on New Year’s Eve. This had followed a period of tensions with the regime during Khaddam's tenure as overseer of Syria's occupation of Lebanon.

Those tensions culminated with Khaddam publicly blaming Assad for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, with whom Khaddam had formed good relations, before fleeing to Paris and leading the Syrian regime to charge him with high treason and expel him from the ruling Baath Party. 

From Paris, Khaddam tried to carve out a role in the opposition to Assad but struggled to win the trust of other dissidents due to his decades of work in the Baath Party.

After an uprising against Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, Khaddam said Syrians would have to take up arms in self-defence unless the world intervened to protect them. He accused Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shiite Islam, and his family of instigating sectarian strife in Syria.

Khaddam, a Sunni Muslim from a middle-class family in the Mediterranean resort town of Baniyas, was once seen as a possible successor to Hafez al-Assad. But instead he helped Bashar firm his grip on power after he took office in June 2000. In the days following the elder Assad's death, Khaddam pushed through decrees elevating Bashar's military rank to general and making him commander of the armed forces - key moves in the uncertain process of succession.

A lawyer by training, Khaddam was foreign minister for 14 years before becoming vice-president in 1984. He oversaw Syria's foreign policy during the 1973 October War with Israel as well as the Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975.

Khaddam played a key role in shaping Syrian policy in Lebanon, where Damascus was the main power until being forced to withdraw its forces in 2005 after the assassination of Hariri.

Khaddam had opposed Bashar al-Assad's backing in 2004 of Emile Lahoud, an ally of the Syrian regime and a rival of Hariri's, as the Lebanese president. Lahoud had already served as president for 6 years by 2004, and Damascus' wish that his tenure be extended could only have been achieved through an amendment of the Lebanese constitution.

After leaving Syria for France in 2005, Khaddam hit out at the Damascus government's corruption and failure to reform. He also said Hariri was threatened by Assad months before his death - an assassination for which a UN-backed tribunal would later indict four members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The Shiite group, a close ally of Assad, denies any role.

Short, sharp and outspoken, Khaddam started his political career as governor in turn of Quneitra, Hama and Damascus, after the Arab Baath Socialist Party came to power in 1963. This was a rapid rise for a man who joined the party at the age of 17 and in a matter of years was elected secretary of the Damascus branch and then member of the ruling Regional Command.

But as a member of the opposition in exile, he allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has long formed a bastion of opposition to Assad and is considered an outlawed organisation by the Syrian regime. Khaddam and the Brotherhood created the National Salvation Front in 2005 which became Syria's largest exiled opposition party, but the endeavour ended in failure.