Syria's ex-vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam on Friday denounced the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying Assad threatened Rafiq Hariri just months before the former Lebanese premier was assassinated in a bomb blast in Beirut on Feb. 14.

Khaddam, who is now in Paris with his family, made the denunciation in an interview with Dubai-based television Al- Arabiya.

He was quoted as revealing that Assad had told Hariri during a meeting in Damascus that "I will destroy anyone who tries to hinder our decisions."

"Hariri received many threats" and "Assad told me he had delivered some very, very harsh words to Hariri," Khaddam added.

When asked if the head of state could have been unaware about the Hariri assassination, Khaddam said the Syrian intelligence services could not have carried out such an operation without Assad being informed.

He also accused the Assad government for committing many mistakes during its domination of neighboring Lebanon.

Assad had apparently protected Lt. General Rustom Ghazali, Syria's former intelligence chief in Lebanon, who was among those questioned by UN investigators probing Hariri's killing, Khaddam criticized.

Khaddam, veteran aide to Syria's late President Hafez al-Assad, stepped down in June. He had been pointman on Lebanon for the late Assad, who ordered Syria's military intervention in the civil war there in 1976.

His remarks were a rare attack on the Syrian government by a former official, while a UN probe into Hariri's killing has implicated senior Syrian officials involved in the assassination case.

The out-going chief UN investigator Detlev Mehlis has submitted two interim reports in October and December, which had accused Syrian and Lebanese officials of involving in the killing of Hariri.

The latest UN report in December said Syria's cooperation with the probe was slow-paced and five Syrian officials questioned by the UN in Vienna were suspects.

The Feb. 14 assassination of Hariri sparked large-scale anti- Syrian protests in Lebanon and eventually the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in late April.

The UN Security Council demanded Damascus offer full and timely cooperation with the international probe.

Syria, however, denies any role in the killing and dismissed the UN charge of slow cooperation as "inaccurate."

Source: Xinhua