DAMASCUS, Jan 1: Syria’s ruling Baath Party has expelled former Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam for treason, the official news agency SANA reported on Sunday, two days after he criticized the president from exile in France. “Khaddam has betrayed the party, the homeland and the (Arab) nation. The Nationalist Command has decided to expel him from the party,” SANA quoted a party statement as saying.

Speaking from Paris, Mr Khaddam on Friday launched an unprecedented attack on President Bashar al Assad, saying he had threatened Rafik al Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated last February. Mr Assad has denied the claim.

Mr Khaddam, who moved to Paris after resigning in June, also accused the government of making political blunders in Lebanon and of failing to deliver economic and political reforms at home, leaving millions of Syrians to go hungry.

“Khaddam made it blatantly clear that he has joined the American and Israeli plot, which aims at striking Syria’s steadfastness and its nationalist role,” the statement said.

Syria’s parliament unanimously voted on Saturday to call on the government to put Mr Khaddam, one of the longest-serving Baath officials and a veteran aide to late President Hafez al Assad, on trial for treason and it accused him of corruption.

Syrian deputies are elected to parliament by popular vote but rarely diverge from the official line. They belong to a group of parties led by the Baath.

Mr Khaddam, in an interview with Al Arabiya television aired on Friday, would not speculate on who had ordered the killing of Mr Hariri, saying ‘we must wait’ for the results of an ongoing UN inquiry that has already implicated senior Syrian officials.

Syria has repeatedly denied any role in the murder.

Mr Khaddam’s move was a service to ‘those who have mobilized all their efforts and powers to implicate Syria in the assassination of Hariri,” the Baath statement said.

Mr Khaddam’s remarks are likely to intensify pressure on Damascus mounting since the Feb 14 truck bombing that killed Mr Hariri and 22 others near Beirut’s seafront.

His assassination sparked mass protests in Beirut that forced Syria to bow to world pressure and end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon in April. —Reuters