Ex-Syrian Aide Says Assad Did Threaten Lebanese 
By John Kifner
December 31, 2005
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/international/middleeast/31syria.html

In a startling break with President Bashar al-Assad, the long-serving former vice president of Syria said Friday that Mr. Assad threatened former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon months before the Lebanese was assassinated.
Hariri was subject to many threats from Syria, the former official, Abdel-Halim Khaddam, said in an interview broadcast yesterday on Al Arabia television. 
Once he was summoned to Damascus, Mr. Khaddam said, and spoken to in extremely harsh words by President Bashar Assad.
A United Nations investigation into the killing of Mr. Hariri and 20 other people by a truck bomb in February concluded in a preliminary report in the fall that it was a carefully planned terrorist act carried out by high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers.
Syrian officials, including Mr. Assad, have denied any involvement in Mr. Hariri's death. But a computer lapse revealed that the original draft of the preliminary report had named Mr. Assad's brother-in-law, Gen. Asef Shawkat, as a key suspect in the plot.
Mr. Khaddam's statement appeared to suggest a serious crack in the tight ruling circles in Damascus, particularly among the so-called Old Guard that had surrounded Mr. Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000.
Only Wednesday, another member of the Old Guard, Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa, said at a news conference in Damascus that Mr. Hariri lied when he told his fellow Lebanese opposition figures that he had been threatened by Mr. Assad.
The meeting in Damascus referred to by Mr. Khaddam occurred on Aug. 26, 2004, when Mr. Assad bluntly ordered that the Lebanese Parliament amend the Constitution to extend the term of his ally, President Émile Lahoud. Mr. Hariri, a billionaire who had almost single-handedly rebuilt the center of Beirut after 15 years of civil war, objected.
The meeting lasted just 15 minutes. According to both the United Nations report and previous accounts by Mr. Hariri's political allies, Mr. Hariri returned shaken, saying Mr. Assad had threatened to break Lebanon on your head.
The report also included the transcript of a taped conversation with the Syrian deputy foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, just two weeks before Mr. Hariri was killed in which he called the meeting the worst day of my life.
When Mr. Hariri protested Syria's domination of Lebanon, the report said, Mr. Moallem replied, referring to the security services, We and the services here have put you into a corner. He continued, Please do not take things lightly.
Syria dominated Lebanon for the last 15 years, after originally sending troops there as peacekeepers soon after the civil war broke out in 1975. The troops were forced to withdraw under international pressure and huge popular demonstrations after Mr. Hariri's assassination. 
But there have since been a number of assassinations by bombing of anti-Syrian figures, the latest of Gebran Tueni, publisher of the newspaper An Nahar, this month.
Mr. Khaddam was widely regarded as the architect of Syria's policy in Lebanon, which was carried out for 20 years by his associate former Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, who as the intelligence chief in Lebanon served as a Syrian proconsul.
Mr. Kanaan was found dead in his office from a pistol shot to the head in October. Syrian officials announced that his death was a suicide. There was widespread speculation, particularly in the Lebanese news media, that he had been killed or forced to kill himself because of what he knew about Mr. Hariri's death.
Mr. Khaddam, who became vice president in 1984, resigned his post in June. He now lives in Paris, where he gave the television interview.
He said he wanted to wait for the results of the United Nations investigation, which is continuing, but added pointedly that no security service in Syria could have made such a decision about an assassination on its own.
This is a big operation with an apparatus behind it, not individuals, he said. What apparatus, that is what the probe will reveal.
Mr. Khaddam said Mr. Hariri was so upset when he left the meeting with Mr. Assad that his nose was bleeding.