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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Assets of Khaddam and his family frozen |
| 2006-01-08 |
| Syria has frozen the assets of former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam and his family after lawmakers accused him of corruption and demanded that he be charged with treason for criticizing the president. The state-run al-Thawra newspaper ran a decree by the finance ministry, which it said was in response to parliamentary debates on Saturday. Officials were not immediately available for comment. "The finance ministry issued a decree to freeze the assets of Abdel-Halim Khaddam, his wife, descendants male and female and their spouses and their descendants...pending judicial investigation," it said. Syria's parliament unanimously voted on Saturday to call on the government to put 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. On Friday, Khaddam launched from Paris an unprecedented attack on President Bashar al-Assad, saying he had threatened Rafik al-Hariri, the Lebanese ex-Prime Minister who was assassinated last February. Assad has denied the claim. On Sunday, Syria's ruling Baath Party expelled Khaddam, one of its longest serving members, for treason. 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, in an interview with Al Arabiya television aired on Friday, would not speculate on who had ordered the killing of Hariri, saying "we must wait" for the results of an ongoing U.N. inquiry that has already implicated senior Syrian officials. Syria has repeatedly denied any role in the murder. Khaddam's remarks are likely to intensify pressure on Damascus mounting since the February 14 truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others near Beirut's seafront. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |